AI Can Build a Brighter Urban Future — If We Let People Have a Say
Tools powered by artificial intelligence could improve city life and bring down barriers to community participation in urban planning. But big risks await.
AI-powered drones could be invaluable for inspecting and repairing high-rise buildings.
Photographer: Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Red lights are obsolete. That seems to be the thinking behind Google’s latest fix for cities, which rolled out late last year in a dozen cities around the world, from Seattle to Jakarta. Most cities still collect the data to determine the timing of traffic signals by hand. But Project Green Light replaced clickers and clipboards with mountains of location data culled from smartphones. Artificial intelligence crunched the numbers, adjusting the signal pattern to smooth the flow of traffic. Motorists saw 30% fewer delays. There’s just one catch. Even as pedestrian deaths in the US reached a 40-year high in 2022, Google engineers omitted pedestrians and cyclists from their calculations.