Page 11 - U4SSC Guiding principles for artificial intelligence in cities

1 Introduction

Urbanization is progressing at an unprecedented rate, with 68 per cent of the world population
expected to reside in urban areas by 2050. Ninety-five per cent of the urban expansion is expected
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to take place in the developing world, putting tremendous pressure on these regions to cope
with the new human development challenges. It is important to address the rising challenges
for urban governance including, but not limited to, economic inclusiveness, increased resource
consumption, environmental deterioration, seamless and convenient mobility, surging housing
needs, new physical infrastructure, and city resilience.

In this context, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a frontier technology that can be leveraged to assist
with decision-making to help address various urban challenges faced by cities across the globe.
Increasingly, people and objects in cities are connecting to the Internet and generating huge
amounts of data thanks to digitalization. AI presents an unprecedented opportunity to learn to solve
urban problems and, by capitalizing on algorithms and urban data, to automate decision-making
at a speed and scale that is not possible for humans.

AI and machine learning (ML):

• can be used to identify, address, and solve a myriad of municipal challenges and problems;
• use data extensively; and

• enable algorithms to be revised and to improve over time by utilizing additional data as a
learning mechanism as it becomes available.

1 https:// www .un .org/ development/ desa/ en/ news/ population/ 2018 -revision -of -world -urbanization -prospects .html

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