New chip is brain for bikes as AGI creeps ever closer

Chinese scientists have unveiled an autonomous bicycle that can steer itself, avoid obstacles and respond to voice commands thanks to a newly developed chip called Tianjic that acts as the brains of the bike.

The chip combines computer science-based machine learning and brain-inspired approaches and is believed by the research team to be the next step forward in the achievement of artificial general intelligence, or AGI, which refers to a machine's ability to learn any intellectual task that a human being can.

"Using just one chip, we can demonstrate the simultaneous processing of versatile algorithms and models in an unmanned bicycle system, realizing real-time object detection, tracking, voice control, obstacle avoidance and balance control," Shi Luping, along with his colleagues at the Center for Brain Inspired Computing Research at Tsinghua University, wrote in a paper published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.