Artificial Intelligence II - AI as co-pilot in urban and regional planning and international cooperation
Imagine, in future planners will have a co-pilot!
The KPMG Future Summit event on AI which I attended on 23 April 2023 [1] did not address directly urban and territorial planning or international cooperation in the field. I was listening to the online event while ironing my shirts (unfortunately, that’s not done by AI yet). What caught my attention was among others the statement by Miriam Kugel, Director of People Science Advisory for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Microsoft. She said that AI will be in future like our co-pilot. While many admin tasks will be taken over by AI more managerial oversight by managers will be needed.
Just imagine all the rules and regulations that have to be consider in planning a city can be considered and factored in by AI. It still will need the planners to identify the best proposals and recommend them to politicians for decision-making. Chris Chiancone, Chief Information Officer at the City of Carralton suggests regarding the use of AI in planning to ‘Picture a tool that can absorb data about a city's current layout, population density, infrastructure, and other factors, and then generate a model of how the city could be restructured to optimize certain objectives.’
Chris Chiancone writes in his paper of 20 June 2023 ‘Revolutionizing Urban Planning with Generative AI: A new Era of Smart Cities’[2]: “At its heart, Generative AI is a type of machine learning that crafts new data instances reflecting its training set. Picture a master artist who, rather than simply duplicating a scene, employs their creativity to produce unique, lifelike outputs from a given input. That's the magic of Generative AI, but in the realm of data. It's the digital world's virtuoso, wielding algorithms and computational power instead of brushes and pigments”. For Chiancone Generative AI brings a unique fusion of creativity and efficiency to urban planning. It's akin to having a supercharged assistant that can process numbers, analyze data, generate models, and make predictions at a pace and scale that humans simply can't compete with. All of this is done with the aim of creating more efficient, habitable, and sustainable cities. According to Chiancone Generative AI is a tool that's not just revolutionizing urban planning, but also holds the potential to significantly enhance the quality of life in our urban habitats. And that ‘supercharged assistant’ corresponds to Miriam Kugels ‘co-pilot’. In spite of all creativity, Chiancone and Kugel understand AI as supportive tools (assistant or co-pilot) and that it needs data strategies, AI governance and capacity building to keep the pilot on track to intended goals. Scenario planning could be one of the big beneficiaries of AI. The planner as pilot of the planning process can modify the scenario setting and ask AI to develop the best scenario accordingly. This way, planners and decision-makers can better test out different options before taking a decision.
Now let’s think ahead a bit further. If AI can support scenario planning AI can also support the inter-sectoral and multi-level coordination of planning process which are often loaded with conflicting interests. AI could extend the scenario planning and apply a Large Language Model to include also all policies, laws and regulations of other relevant policy fields, policy levels plus the rights of citizens and property owners affected by a plan. By combining and comparing all these data AI could either identify win-win situations or generate proposals to bridge conflicting positions. It still will need the planning process and the decision-making but AI could support this process significantly by assuring that all relevant policies, rules and regulations are taken into account. And if new challenges and opportunities emerge, they can be included to proposed scenarios without much delay. And planners assisted by their ‘co-pilot’ might become even more reliable and appreciated authorities in the planning process.
[1] https://kpmg.com/de/de/home/events/uebersicht/kpmg-zukunftsgipfel.html
[2] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/revolutionizing-urban-planning-generative-ai-new-era-smart-chiancone/
AI and the interrelated web of sustainable development goals
Since 2012 I am working on the post 2015 development agenda of the United Nations which is since 2015 called 2030 Agenda and it includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals with 169 targets. The Agenda is currently off-track but what puzzles me since its launch is how to we can keep track of the fact that goals and targets are an interrelated web. Progress on one goal or target may imply regression on others. How can a zero-sum game or an overall regression be prevented? Here too, AI offers opportunities.
The Human Settlements Programme of the United Nations (UN-Habitat) launched in 2022 its report “AI and Cities” [3]. This first more comprehensive review of the relation between AI, cities and urban planning includes among others the recommendation to align AI strategies with SDGs and National and Local Goals (UN-Habitat 2022 AI and Cities, page 100).
[3] https://unhabitat.org/sites/default/files/2022/10/artificial_intelligence_and_cities_risks_applications_and_governance.pdf
While humans often tend to chooseto reduce complexity by raisin picking and focusing on selected goals while ignoring others AI could be asked to monitor developments in a more comprehensive and integrated manner. Fed with all goals and indicators, national strategies and programs to implement the 2030 Agenda and with access to national and other available data AI could draft the SDG implementation report and make proposals on how to get agenda implementation back on track. Again, AI would be just a co-pilot and supercharged assistant. It could and should not not substitute political decision-making but if governed according to jointly agreed rules it could give monitoring and advisory services by the UN more authority and generate proposals for more effective and efficient use of available resources for goal achievement by national, local and other stakeholders. Certainly, it will require investments into data strategies, governance, capacity building and much attention for the just beginning process of AI development and application. The AI rocket is flying on already more than 100 million computers while it is at the same time still under construction. That makes it so urgent to pay attention now.
And what comes next?
In this times of multiple crises AI offers risks and a lot of opportunities. AI won’t turn me into a data person or IT nerd but it’s exciting to understand and apply the new opportunities as international expert in urban and regional development. We have to grow up to the challenges of our time and we don’t have the time to wait until our brains grow. Therefore, as analyst and advisor I will be glad to put my penny into the jar of discussing and using AI as co-pilot and to facilitate capacity building at the interface between technology and governance of international, national and local development. Countries like Saudi Arabia are investing heavily in AI. How is your country getting ready?
Please find the first blog post on Artificial Intelligence - Travelling with a rocket still under construction here https://www.ugraute.de/artificial-intelligence-i
Policies and Governance for Resilient and Sustainable Cities and Regions
