In their report, Moro, a professor of physics, and Wang, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, analyzed more than 100 studies in the fields of urban science, computational social science and geospatial AI, which integrates artificial intelligence technology with mapping and satellite imagery.<\/p>\n
For the study, the researchers examined two types of increasingly popular forms of AI showing up in the urban science space \u2014 distribution-fitting generative models and foundation models.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Distribution generative models are a type of AI that can create new images and renderings based on a large corpus of data.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOne example in urban settings, you could send to a model a distribution of satellite images around a city and they will be able to produce another part of the city,\u201d Moro said.<\/p>\n
The team found that urban planners are using this type of AI for a range of applications, including to predict flood scenarios.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou train the model with all the different pictures you have about flooding in different parts of the world, and then you could ask it \u2018How will a flood, for example, in the city center of Boston look like?\u2019 and they will be able to actually reproduce that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Foundation models, on the other hand, are more instruction-based and learn primarily through human language \u2013 think large language model-based chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude or Google\u2019s Notebook LM tool, which can translate complicated documents into plain English.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Those tools are increasingly being used to make complicated and dense policy documents more understandable for the general public, he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In one study the researchers analyzed, AI agents were even used to represent the perspective of residents in two neighborhoods in Beijing during urban planning meetings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As members of the meeting, the AI agents were able to speak on the issues that were important to the community, and even influenced future land development plans, according to the report.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe study found improvements in measures, including participant satisfaction and inclusion,\u201d said Moro. \u201cThis is a particularly interesting example of AI facilitating community participation rather than simply automating a planning decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
But while generative AI holds a lot of promise, it also comes with a hefty set of challenges and limitations as well, the researchers noted.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Like all forms of generative AI, these models can \u201cinherit and amplify biases\u201d found in their training data, the researchers wrote. Additionally, they often can produce false or misleading information.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIn high-stakes settings such as disaster response or large-scale infrastructure planning, these limitations become governance risks,\u201d they wrote, referencing their tendency to make inaccurate statements and the challenge of interpreting how they came up with their responses.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why as communities continue to adopt the technologies it\u2019s important to develop strong frameworks surrounding their use and development, Morro and Wang argue in the article.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They also offered an ethical framework urban planners should consider built around five key themes\u00a0 \u2014\u00a0 fairness, privacy, explainability, controllability and community participation.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
\u201cCommunities have adopted a lot of these AI technologies, but we haven\u2019t seen a deep reflection on what is needed for these technologies to be accepted both at the level of our research [and] at the level of practitioners,\u201d said Moro, whose research focuses on the intersection of big data and human dynamics.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One of their biggest pieces of advice is for communities to develop robust validation and reliability system checks, explained Wang. This responsibility should be shared by both the AI providers and the urban planners implementing the technology, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we use it it\u2019s important to evaluate it honestly,\u201d he said. \u201cWe can\u2019t just say there\u2019s a new toy. Let\u2019s use it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Moro said ensuring that human review is part of these processes will likely be costly. It\u2019s a lot cheaper to let a Large Language Model (LLM) work in the background and accept their output at face value than to hire a human worker to validate those responses, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, the researchers said they were heartened to see communities are taking that responsibility seriously.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe human experience is really valuable,\u201dhe said. \u201cWe see a lot of initiatives to incorporate humans in the loop.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AI is showing up in nearly every aspect of daily life \u2014 from internet searches to visits to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,24544,71987],"class_list":["post-146443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cities","tag-urban"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}