CAIUS (Consequences of AI for Urban Societies

  • Mannheim, Germany
  • March 2021
  • University of Mannheim / Stuttgart Media University / LMU Munich
Artificial intelligence plays a key role in the implementation of smart city services, for example in detecting patterns in the usage of public services to optimize the service quality, or in the identification of unusual behaviour or measurements to trigger an alarm. The basis for such smart services is always data, which can be generated specifically for these services (such as the installation of air pollution sensors) or which can be made available from existing government data or other data sources which are relevant for the general public. This project focuses on a potential negative effect of smart cities with the question: Where do smart city applications lead to potential erosion of solidarity of the urban society?
  • Closed source
  • 78/22/0 (% m/f/d)
  • Public

Project stage (in ):

Research/planning

Implemented by:

Inhouse

Industrial Sectors:

Transportation and storage, Administrative and support service activities, Public administration and defence; compulsory social security

Usage of AI:

Data Management and Analysis, Generative Models, Simulation, Policy Optimization

Generation of AI:

Traditional Machine Learning (Linear Regression, CART, SVM, etc.), Deep Learning (CNN, Transformers, etc.)

Model training:

Supervised Learning, Reinforcement Learning

Contact

Responsible Person

Prof. Dr. Kai Eckert

Motivation and values

What in your view defines the public interest and how does your project meet this purpose?

Investigation on how urban societies are affected by automated decision making

How did the idea of your project come about?

Internal in our organization

What is the goal of your project in relation to the public interest?

Research about potential risk of AI agents on a macro level by the investigation of social and economic factors.

Guiding Values

What are your top 5 guiding-values for the project? Top 1

Fairness

What measures do you use to implement this value? Top 1

Implement fairness metrics Research on how fairness can be measured

What are your top 5 guiding-values for the project? Top 2

Impact Aware Feedback Loop

What measures do you use to implement this value? Top 2

Train AI models by directly feeding fairness rewards from makro level

What are your top 5 guiding-values for the project? Top 3

Social Simulation

What measures do you use to implement this value? Top 3

Traffic simulation investigations on agent's behaviour using dynamic pricing strategies with different reward functions.

Design & Safeguards

Which stakeholders were involved in the process of development and implementation of the project?

Developer, External domain expert, Civil society, Public administration, Academic researcher

How did you engage relevant stakeholders?

Co-creation process, Contacts

Have the project results been validated by third parties?

Yes

Have the design and the results of the project been made transparent to the public?

Yes

In what way have the design and the results of the project been made transparent to the public?

By third party auditors, By academic researchers

Involving the people who will be affected by the project is a necessary part of the project design

2

Which direct channels for feedback exist?

Peer review Status reports

What technical and organizational safeguards have you implemented to protect personal data and mitigate possible harms? Choose all that apply

De-identification (incl. obfuscation), Authentication and access management, User control (consent, update, retract), Maintaining an up to date privacy policy