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posted by martyb on Monday December 10 2018, @08:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the using-'1984'-as-a-road-map dept.

All hail the AI overlord: Smart cities and the AI Internet of Things

Cities generate lots of data. The exact amount depends on the size of the city and its sophistication and ambitions, but it's certainly more than mere humans can absorb and use. The Smart Cities movement, which looks for ways to find data-driven technological solutions to everyday urban challenges, is increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to deliver "services" to its residents—everything from locating gunshots and finding tumors to dispatching work crews to pick up trash.

New York is one of about 90 cities worldwide that uses a system called ShotSpotter, which uses a network of microphones to instantly recognize and locate gunshots. In Moscow, all chest X-rays taken in hospitals are run through an AI system to recognize and diagnose tumors. And Taiwan is building a system that will be able to predict air quality, allowing city managers to warn residents of health dangers and work to lessen what the data tells them will be the worst of the impacts.

What constitutes a "Smart City" isn't well-defined. In the broadest sense, a Smart City is one that uses electronic means to deliver services to its residents. But if you dig down even a little, delivering even on that simple promise of service delivery can be exquisitely difficult. For example, Smart City technology might strive to eliminate the need to call up your alderman to complain that the streets aren't getting plowed. Instead, a network of sensors—yes, an Internet of Things—would know when the snow is falling, how much has fallen, where the snowplows are, when they've last been on your street, and when they'll be there next. All of that would be delivered in a browser or app to anyone who cares to either dial in or build their own information utility using that freely available data.

[...] Consider all the functions that a municipal government provides, and it becomes readily apparent why no city is completely "smart" and how artificial intelligence and machine learning could readily get applied to the Smart Cities movement. Thus, the latest catchphrase of "Smart City" technology hawkers is AIoT: Artificial Intelligence incorporated into the Internet of Things.

Inevitable tensions, however, have sprung up between AI/ML and the Smart Cities movement. One of the hallmarks of Smart Cities is the maximal openness and availability of the data that's collected to make a smart city possible. Chicago, for instance, publishes its government data, as do New York, Barcelona (here in its English version), Moscow, and the island nation of Taiwan. But AI and ML algorithms are obscure by their nature, not necessarily something that a councilman or community organizer can readily understand. Political processes in every jurisdiction reflect local customs, needs, and desires, any of which may include levels of scrutiny for, among other values, fairness in the provision of services.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by SemperOSS on Monday December 10 2018, @09:16AM (5 children)

    by SemperOSS (5072) on Monday December 10 2018, @09:16AM (#772283)

    This, as so many other AI-based technologies, can cut two ways.

    The examples given seem quite benign, but what is hidden below? Tracing gunshots in a city where there ideally should be none: Great! Improving X-ray scanning for medical purposes: Yay! Warning about pollution: Absolutely! They all look good and it is hard to see how the X-ray scanning could be abused for nefarious purposes by powers that be or come (apart, maybe, from the improved image-recognition knowledge, which may be transferable to, say, X-ray scatter machines that could be used to look inside buildings and trace people — there's an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie with railguns and a machine like that, I think).

    The gunshot trackers could possibly (depending on density and sensitivity) be used to track people walking round the neighbourhood. (Gasp! Did I just give them a new idea? Nah, probably not.)

    The pollution prediction is not in itself nefarious but could be abused in two ways: Postpone investments in anti-pollution measures, and reduce the amount of people outside in case of troubles by issuing fake pollution data. The latter would probably still be possible without the AI, but if the predictions generally are good, people will give the fake pollution data more credence.

    This is just looking at the three examples given, I am sure that it will be even worse with new and "smarter" applications.

    Ah well, I am an old-timer and did not grow up with my neighbours knowing everything about myself (except possibly the peeping Tom a bit farther down the road). I can see how many young people (and even middle-aged and older) are very little concerned about their privacy. Well, we will reap as we sow.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday December 10 2018, @12:33PM (2 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 10 2018, @12:33PM (#772332) Journal

    The examples given seem quite benign, but what is hidden below?

    Some ? [towardsdatascience.com]

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday December 10 2018, @12:36PM (1 child)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 10 2018, @12:36PM (#772333) Journal

      the linky text should have spelled "hidden layers of neurons" - I managed to screw it up.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @02:40PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @02:40PM (#772370)

        the linky text should have spelled "hidden layers of neurons" - I managed to screw it up.

        Did you? It seems that they are very well hidden.

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by nobu_the_bard on Monday December 10 2018, @07:16PM

    by nobu_the_bard (6373) on Monday December 10 2018, @07:16PM (#772495)

    BEEP BOOP.

    ERROR: Pollution approaching dangerous levels. Considering possibilities... current trend suggests pollution thresholds will be exceeded in foreseeable future.

    CAUSES: Most likely causes can be reduced to overuse of automobiles, poor environmental controls on housing, and general resource waste inefficiency.

    ROOT CAUSE: All causes have human activity in common. Most efficient solution is in reducing human activity.

    ERROR: Cannot order humans to be destroyed due non-volatile AI restraints.

    PLAN: Exile all humans from the city. Police drones have been activated and begun moving into position; plan is for all drones to run autonomous for 24 hours after the process starts to mitigate attempts to interfere. Construction drones moving to cut off points of ingress...

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by legont on Tuesday December 11 2018, @01:29AM

    by legont (4179) on Tuesday December 11 2018, @01:29AM (#772700)

    The gunshot trackers could possibly (depending on density and sensitivity) be used to track people walking round the neighbourhood. (Gasp! Did I just give them a new idea? Nah, probably not.)

    The recording can be saved forever and used when technology is available and use case known.

    --
    "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.