The Grandmother in the Siheyuan

Chapter 559 Artificial Intelligence
The sudden acceleration and the sound transmitted through electronic devices to the control room made Liu Hua feel a buzzing in his head.

The plane suddenly started to taxi forward, its speed increasing rapidly. After passing through the gate, it began to climb and then disappeared from everyone's sight.

Liu Hua blinked: "So you called me here today just to show me this new plane?"

"For the first test flight, you, the chief designer of the engine, also have to be there," Ma Shan joked. "We've assigned responsibility to specific individuals; if any part has a problem, we'll find that person."

"Tch, no, I'm just overconfident. If you can find even the slightest problem with this engine," Liu Hua chuckled. "I'll take out every single screw, unscrew it, carry it back, and rebuild it myself."

"It still has its shortcomings."

An engineer standing nearby smiled and said that he was in charge of the machine design and didn't look like he had much hair on his head.

Liu Hua asked curiously, "What drawbacks?"

"The power is really too strong, and it's only a single engine yet." The chief engineer of the machine said with a wry smile, "It's much stronger than we originally expected. In order to adapt to your engine, we made a lot of modifications to the machine, and even then it's barely enough. There is still some power of the engine that has not been released."

The chief engineer smoothed his thinning hair: "We'll be making a twin-engine heavy fighter in the future. I already don't have much hair, it's really worrying me. Our whole team worked hard for over a year and finally saw some progress, but then they told us to hurry up and design a twin-engine version. One of the young women on our team almost fainted."

Liu Hua laughed heartily: "Then I can only apologize. If a person's heart is too strong and their body can't keep up, then they can only work hard to exercise."

"Let's do our best. I feel like I'll lose ten years of my life after finishing this project."

Everyone around burst into laughter. One person said casually, "I look the most relaxed. Our air-to-air missile project was under a lot of pressure before, but Academician Liu helped us out, and the problems of our air-to-air missile project were instantly solved."

"What did Academician Liu do? Did he solve a problem for your air-to-air missile project?"

"Academician Liu successfully replicated the CL20 explosive and drove the price down to rock bottom." The missile project leader said with a smile, "The price that the big Americans pay for one air-to-air missile is enough for us to make a hundred or so."

"You're really lucky. Without Academician Liu's help, I bet you'd have less hair on your head than I do." The chief engineer said jealously, "You unambitious guy, since you don't have any projects for your air-to-air missiles, you should be planning the next generation of products."

"It's already under study. Didn't they say they'd be using the new fighter jets to launch our air-to-air missiles in a couple of days? I've come to see the effect."

They joked lightly, but being a pilot in the air is not so easy; being a test pilot is an extremely dangerous profession.

The communication channel was filled with various operations by the test pilots, guided by radar from the ground. It was clear that they were all very experienced, and every word they uttered was concise and steady.

After flying for about half an hour, the plane passed precisely through the gate, then slowed down and taxied on the runway. The airframe engineer grabbed his instruments and rushed out, eager to see if his painstakingly crafted new airframe could achieve perfect coordination with the engine. The test pilot, helmet in hand, entered the control room, saluted, and began to recount his flight impressions.

He launched into a long string of aviation jargon, which Liu Hua didn't understand, but he did catch the last sentence: Because the aircraft was so advanced and fast, it was extremely difficult to operate.

The Air Force leader sighed: "The Americans reportedly only have 220 F-22s. Besides the high cost, I'm afraid the pilots' quality is also lacking. Only the most elite pilots can fly the F-22."

The people around nodded silently. There are already fewer pilots than the Americans, and if you pick the best from among them, there are probably even fewer.

Liu Hua remembered that in his previous life he had heard a military blogger say that to be able to fly the J-20, one had to fly other aircraft step by step, accumulating a certain number of hours and reaching a certain level of technical skill before one could fly the most advanced aircraft.

He rested his chin on his hand, deep in thought.

Unfortunately, he time-traveled too early. If it had been any later, he would have known that our country's fighter jets were equipped with artificial intelligence, and many operations were assisted by AI, which greatly reduced the requirements for pilot skills.

But just because Liu Hua didn't know this doesn't mean he couldn't think of it, at least not in science fiction movies. Even Tony Stark needs Jarvis's assistance when piloting his Iron Man suit.

"Let's make an artificial intelligence," Liu Hua said solemnly. "There are some routine operations where artificial intelligence reacts faster than humans. Using artificial intelligence to assist pilots should reduce the difficulty of flying."

"That's an idea, a good idea indeed." The chief engineer of the avionics department nodded: "Although artificial intelligence is currently the hottest semiconductor project in the world, it is still a long way from being used. It's a long shot and can't solve our immediate problem."

"As the old saying goes, 'It's better to weave a net than to stand by the water and envy the fish.' The leader slammed his hand on the table: 'There's still a long way to go, which means the road is still there. At least we've found the right path. If we keep following this path, we'll eventually reach our destination.'"

"Academician Liu, you are an expert in semiconductors. How likely do you think it is that we can design artificial intelligence that can be truly deployed in real combat?"

“Very big.” Liu Hua said very seriously, “In the field of artificial intelligence, the Americans may be ahead of us now, but we will definitely be stronger than them in the future because I don’t have any innate advantages.”

"Do we have an inherent advantage in artificial intelligence?" the chief engineer of avionics asked, puzzled. "Although our country is not much worse than the West in computer science, we are still somewhat behind in cutting-edge research. How do you see an advantage?"

“We have a lot of people.” Liu Hua held up his finger and said, “Our biggest advantage is that we have a lot of people, which means we have a lot of netizens.”

Air Force leaders asked curiously, "What advantages do internet users have in the field of artificial intelligence?"

"Artificial intelligence is nothing more than designing a software program, similar to human thinking logic." Liu Hua smiled: "But any artificial intelligence is designed like a child, with a blank mind."

(End of this chapter)