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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @02:45PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @02:45PM (#772375)

    Just put the AI on the no-fly list, then you should be safe.