Terminus Group updated AI CITY concept showcasing vision of the coming AGI era

Standing on the shore of Fengming Lake, Chongqing, Terminus Group's AI PARK is fast becoming a global benchmark for the development and design of mega smart cities of the future, and now it goes further by its updated four-pillar concept that will evolve the AI City into the AGI era.

Starting its operations in 2021, Terminus Group's AI PARK, in Chongqing, is a microcosm of the company's flagship product – the AI CITY. The new concept and upgrade, as outlined by Terminus Group, focuses on the following four pillars: Integration of digitalization and reality, intelligent evolution, green and low-carbon operations, and human-machine co-existence.

Commenting on the latest upgrades, Victor Ai, the Founder and CEO of Terminus Group, said: "By imagining artificial intelligence (AI) as the 'brain' and the Internet of Things (IoT) as the 'neural networks', and implementing AIoT capabilities from end-to-end, Terminus Group's AI PARK has become a sustainable, self-realizing, and evolutionary organism. With the widespread application of 'digital humans', AI in Grid Computing (AIGC) and other technologies in the AI PARK will become a new paradigm for defining and exploring the future paths of AI or smart cities."

Already known to be a testing ground for the company's entire stack of products and solutions, Terminus Group's AI PARK, Chongqing, is also a technology and product incubator. That is to say that technologies deployed in Terminus Group's flagship product – AI CITY – undergo testing and pass their "testing to practical" process, in AI PARK.

The newly introduced concept pillars will work in tandem with Terminus Group's proprietary TacOS 3.0 (Terminus AI City Operating System), an urban AIoT operating platform created to meet the needs of urban digitalization and sustainability. Terminus Group has created an AIoT-based five-tier technical platform: CityIoT, CityOS (or TacOS), CityAI, CityAPP, and CityStudio, enabling city-level operating system.

Terminus Group Chongqing AI PARK

Human-machine co-existence

In the AGI era, devices in physical space (robots, computers, screens, etc.) will become objects that can interact with humans. In doing so, machines will fully integrate into human work and social lives, transforming from auxiliary tools into helpers for improving work efficiency and enhancing well-being, becoming an indispensable part of everyday lives.

Digitalization and reality integration

AI CITY will achieve digital twinning of various elements and scenarios of human, vehicles, objects, buildings, environment, and events, enabling comprehensive mapping between the real world and the digitally twinned world. This will promote the integration of technology and business and achieve digital mapping, analysis diagnosis, learning prediction, and decision-making autonomy. Digitalization will no longer be limited to a set of software or a three-dimensional visualization screen, but rather a digital world that is fully integrated with the physical one.

Smart and intelligent evolution

Based on the fusion innovation of AI and IoT technology, AI CITY can achieve flexible strategic scheduling of all time, all space and all scenarios for connected objects and events, enabling links between intelligent scenarios and infinitely expanding the imagination of smart and intelligent scenarios. The continuous iteration of models and the release of digital information will activate more scenarios, allowing the physical space to be continuously optimized based on the user's identity, habits, and demands.

Green and low-carbon operations

Based on AIoT technology and optical storage flexible technology, AI CITY can also achieve automatic tracking of energy flow and carbon output, promoting efficient energy consumption and conservation and supporting sustainable development at the macro level.

At the beginning of 2023, AIGC technology, especially ChatGPT, pushed the world further towards a more ubiquitous use of AI in both our personal and working lives and ever closer to the coming era of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Currently, AI is programmed to adapt to certain circumstances by learning from digital information and designed to operate within certain parameters. AGI, on the other hand, is another stage further and will be able to handle various tasks and perform any intellectual task that a human would be able to do – for example, not only responding to questions, but to ask them.

We are, therefore, heading towards what could be called a "quaternionic world". One composed of human beings, the physical world, robots, and virtual worlds. In the near future, machines are likely to possess human like intelligence, including features such as autonomous learning and emotional understanding, and these elements are expected to generate new forms of super and fusion intelligence. The upgraded AI PARK explores the path to the "quaternionic world", demonstrating the possibility of using AIoT to implement AGI technology, on a much wider scale.

Explaining the 'technical logic' of the AI PARK, Terminus Group CTO, Dr. Hua Xiansheng, adds: "Unlike other smart cities, by using the five-tier TacOS 3.0 product system, smart intelligence not only stays within the inherent intelligence of a single smart device, but it also emphasizes the overall comprehensive, integrated and connected smart intelligence between devices and the environment. This is core to the spirit of all our AI PARKs."

Taking one of the component tiers as an example, CityIoT will see robots simultaneously have the capabilities of motion intelligence, strong interaction intelligence, and vehicle and environmental collaboration. Unlike previous robots that could only complete simple and straightforward tasks, AGI robots will independently adjust their task completion strategies based on environmental conditions and user demands, so they can achieve efficient delivery in complex scenarios.

The robots in AI PARK have capabilities of vehicles and environmental collaboration, completing scheduling in complex environments

As one might suspect, in an ever-changing world of rapid technological progress, the upgraded AI PARK is still not the ultimate form of the 'smart space' envisioned by Terminus Group. If comparing the smart space to a living entity that can learn, grow, and converse, then AI PARK is still in its infancy, while the full AI CITY concept will be an adult with a complete set of functional and behavioral abilities.

"The upgrade of Terminus Group's AI PARK, Chongqing, demonstrates that we can have confidence in the direction of our concept and approach, but there is still much to be done. The technology, compared to where AGI will be, is still in its relative infancy; however, we are growing healthily, robustly, and rapidly, " says Victor.

"Of course, as with any ground-breaking technological shift, the rise of AGI technology is bound to create new challenges for many industries as we all adapt, but it will also provide excellent opportunities for industry practitioners to take a lead on those trends.

"For our part, Terminus Group has begun to explore large model technology for smart and intelligent spaces and, in the near future, people can have conversations with Terminus Group's digital humans at a number of AI PARKs that we will be bringing to various regions and countries. From AI PARK to AI CITY, Terminus Group looks forward to creating and providing outstanding cutting-edge technologies to urban populations, based on smart spaces and enabling more creative service experiences," he concluded.