mesbooks Chapter 964: The Contract is Formed
Chapter 964: The Contract is Formed
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His thesis did not receive much recognition in academia; on the contrary, it was met with a lot of ridicule, since the artificial intelligence he is currently researching is not a mainstream research area in academia.
He never expected that the person who was interested in this was actually the big boss of their company, who traveled all the way to Singapore to meet him.
He began by posing the question: "Do you know what the biggest challenge is in controlled nuclear fusion?"
Huang Xiaochuan watched this guy with great interest. He liked this classroom question-and-answer format, but he didn't say anything. Instead, he kept looking at the researcher named Mickey Wu.
Seeing that Huang Xiaochuan did not respond in the way he expected, Mickey Wu was slightly embarrassed, but he still continued to explain: "Actually, the biggest challenge is not a single technical problem, but an extremely complex problem that combines systems engineering and basic science."
Several key challenges exist: first, the extreme complexity of plasma physics; second, the limitations of materials; third, the precision required to achieve this engineering feat; fourth, the deep integration of multiple disciplines; and fifth, the enormous cost of trial and error.
Hearing this, Huang Xiaochuan nodded. He had looked at the guy's resume. He had his undergraduate and master's degrees from Imperial College London in the UK, majoring in physics. He had also served as a teaching assistant in high-energy physics at Imperial College London during his master's studies. However, he had switched to computer artificial intelligence for his doctoral studies, which was quite a big change.
However, it is precisely because of this that he proposed such a bold idea, as he had a certain foundation in it.
He continued, "Our current scientific research model consists of four aspects: teamwork, theoretical research, experimentation, and simulation. Although progress has been made, the speed is limited by the information processing speed of the human brain, the barriers between disciplines, and the long experimental cycle. This makes the idea of putting controlled nuclear fusion into practical use this century seem like a distant dream."
At this point, he changed the subject: "But I believe that an AGI (Artificial Intelligence General) with general human intelligence will have a disruptive advantage in the integrated design of controlled nuclear fusion devices."
Because AGI can achieve comprehensive integration and reasoning across multiple disciplines, in my vision, it can simultaneously master all fields related to controlled nuclear fusion, such as plasma physics, nuclear engineering, materials science, fluid mechanics, and mechanical design, breaking down disciplinary barriers and performing global optimization. I also believe that AGI can discover hidden connections that human expert teams overlook due to communication barriers.
Moreover, the highly intelligent AGI can even autonomously run high-fidelity, multi-scale simulations and find the most suitable parameters from the massive amount of data obtained, and perform optimization iterations.
Moreover, this highly self-intelligent AGI may not be bound by traditional thinking conventions, and might even allow us to design a new configuration that surpasses tokamaks and stellarators, new heating or control principles, or even entirely new nuclear fusion pathways.
At this point, Huang Xiaochuan noticed a gleam in the man's eyes—the kind of gleam that radiates intense anticipation for the future. But the man's explanation wasn't finished. He continued, "The AGI I envision can autonomously propose hypotheses, design simulations, analyze results, and refine related theories. In short, it's an all-around scientist. If this can be realized, I believe it can significantly shorten the iteration cycle of theories. I boldly predict that the unit of this iteration cycle will be shortened from 'years' to 'days,' or even 'hours.'"
It must be said that this guy's ideas were indeed very avant-garde and bold for that period of time, but Huang Xiaochuan could understand them.
"This is a key semantic point, and I've set it up in several levels. The first level is complete independence, where AGI can autonomously discover physical laws and design devices without human input. However, this requires AGI to possess fundamental scientific discovery capabilities, which I believe is a possibility, but not something that can be achieved in the near future or in a short period of time."
There is another level I call the core-led mode. Within the framework of our given ultimate goals and known physical laws, AGI independently completes the entire process from theoretical calculations, conceptual design, engineering blueprints to simulation verification. It will provide us with the final solution, and we, as researchers in related disciplines, will be responsible for understanding, reviewing, and implementing it. This is the most likely and most realistic scenario.
The last level is the weakest compared to the first two. It can only be called a new super tool. It can only exist as an auxiliary tool for us humans, but it can also accelerate the research process. It is also a process that we humans must go through when we advance into true AI.
Therefore, I believe that AGI, in its final stages of development, will inevitably be able to independently design highly feasible controlled nuclear fusion devices, taking a core-driven approach.
At this point, Huang Xiaochuan knew that the conversation was basically coming to an end.
He knew that if the AGI this guy mentioned could assist in or independently design a controllable nuclear fusion device, then it could also design all kinds of devices and equipment that humans need. If this thing were to be invented in the future, it would definitely be a hot potato. Thinking of this, he made a plan in his mind.
He began, "The grand blueprint you've described to me is indeed very interesting. I'd like to know what kind of support you need right now? Also, I must point out that you should know that if your hypothesis comes true or is successfully developed by you, it will also be very dangerous, both internally and externally."
He frankly admitted, "I haven't really thought about this seriously, and I don't have that much time to think about these things. I just want to do something purely."
Huang Xiaochuan nodded, satisfied with this person's honest attitude.
He said, "In that case, let me take care of those things for you. But as you know, this requires your full cooperation and a high degree of confidentiality. And I'll take care of everything you need."
"Okay! No problem at all." Wu felt that as long as he could continue his research, nothing else mattered, because he was just a pure researcher.
Huang Xiaochuan solemnly shook hands with the unkempt researcher, which was considered a kind of agreement. Of course, a lot of related documents would have to be signed afterward.