Page 13 - U4SSC Guiding principles for artificial intelligence in cities

3 AI principles framework

Artificial Intelligence, as a frontier technology, is used in urban contexts to address various city
challenges. These can include areas such as hiring, utilities, transportation, cybersecurity and
tourism. Today, undoubtedly Artificial Intelligence already facilitates the lives of people in various
contexts and applications. However, as with all other erstwhile technologies, it also brings its own
risks and pitfalls.

In this context, this guide presents a principles framework that cities can use for their own AI systems.
The framework is flexible to accommodate cities’ particular goals and objectives by allowing them
to select their own principles from a relatively rich set of potential principles. The implementation
of these principles is important to achieve intended outcomes from AI systems in cities.

The AI principles framework developed in this guide aims to establish a list of AI principles as
mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive as possible. The first section provides a general
overview of existing initiatives that have formulated AI principles. The second section synthesizes
a list of AI principles for cities to use in the form of a framework.

3.1 PART 1: General overview of formerly issued AI principles documents

Multiple stakeholders, including private and public sectors, Non-Governmental Organizations
(NGOs), associations, and academic institutions have published AI principles. More specifically, in
the past five years, there has been a proliferation of AI principles documents providing guidance
in concomitance with increased use of AI systems and solutions in cities.

Table 1 is a non-exhaustive compendium of erstwhile issued AI principles indicating their names
and sources from different stakeholder types.

Table 1: Examples of formerly issued AI principles documents

AI Principles Name Source

Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence UNESCO
Asilomar AI Principles Future of Life Institute
A Unified Framework of Five Principles for AI in Society MIT
AI at Google: our principles Google
Understanding artificial intelligence ethics and safety The Alan Turing Institute

A guide for the responsible design and implementation of
AI systems in the public sector
AI Ethics Principles Australian Government - Department of
Industry, Science, Energy and Resources
Beijing AI Principles Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence
(BAAI)

3