What We Do

Bicycles
for the mind.

The March 1973 issue of Scientific American included a curious infographic. It charted the efficiency of animal locomotion — the kilocalories needed to move a kilogram a kilometer. Least efficient animal: the mouse. Most efficient, surprisingly: the salmon.

But the curious part was an outlier. Peak efficiency belonged to something that was not properly an animal — a point on the graph simply labeled “Man on Bicycle.”

It stood out from every other animal, including humans au naturel, who are of middling efficiency.

Scientific American's 1973 chart of the energy cost of locomotion by body weight, with 'Man on Bicycle' plotted as the most efficient traveler of all.
S. S. Wilson, “Bicycle Technology,” Scientific American, Vol. 228, No. 3 (March 1973), p. 81. Scientific American updated the classic chart in 2025 →

That figure, ostensibly about kinematics, occupies a cherished place in the folklore of computer science because of what it inspired — a vision of what computers could be: bicycles for the mind.

Unfortunately, a different vision animates AI today: replacements for the mind. To us, that is a pretty uninspiring vision of the future. Automation cuts costs but does little to raise the ceiling. Merely replicating human capability also means we are limited by the limits of human capacity.

Why settle for those limits?

At The Bike Shop, we are committed to building bicycles for the mind — algorithms and AI that enhance human capacity, not replace it.

Based at MIT and the University of Chicago, The Bike Shop brings together economists and computer scientists to tackle core social and computational challenges.