AI-Driven Innovation for Cities and People

AI for social good is being recognized as an increasingly important theme in the development of machine learning and artificial intelligence circles, including academia and industry. Although there have been many applications of AI for good in the last few years, tangible and sustainable progress has not been achieved in providing methods and processes to easily design and deploy solutions. AI applications for good require greater know-how, models for collaboration, best practices, and financial support in order to enable wider implementation. This contrast between potential and existing solutions demonstrates that different stakeholders (e.g., problem owners, technical communities, civil society, governments, etc.) could benefit from guidance in approaching AI for good projects.

There is a need to identify, gather, and share the criteria for success in use cases carried out to date with AI-for-good applications. Such an analysis allows us to gain a deeper understanding of common frameworks, needs, and challenges, as well as to identify best practices and models for implementation. A wealth of global experience and knowledge in designing, developing, and deploying beneficial AI projects already exists. However, in order to maximize the benefits for a wider international community of stakeholders, this collective must be made easily accessible and available.

Working groups will be formed to complete the deliverables. The current working groups are:

The purpose of this working group is to build the collaborative community involved in this effort to reach the goals stated below, connecting with points of contact from cities, communities, and civil society in order to identify and manage collaboration to identify and catalog potential use cases and deployments, or planned deployments of AI-driven solutions.

The purpose of this working group is to analyze the repository of deployments and use cases, identifying context around problems that benefited from AI capabilities and the solutions that were deployed:

• What is the problem that is being addressed by the deployment?
• How was the problem defined? Who were the stakeholders and how were they involved?
• What solution(s) were deployed? Were there successful/unsuccessful deployments?
• Lessons learned.
• Path to sustainable usage for those solutions.

Ultimately, the two working groups could develop an actionable framework/template that can serve as a roadmap for future efforts to deploy AI for the common good.

The primary goal of this program is to provide blueprints to deploy beneficial and responsible artificial intelligence (AI) systems for cities and people. The effort is a contribution to help AI systems be used for the common and public good and their potential benefits made available to all, starting with municipalities which are leading the way in use and application of such systems.

The goals of AI-Driven Innovation for Cities and People are:

1. Identify existing projects, efforts, and solutions/deployments in cities
   1. Define and send out surveys to cities worldwide to get involved
   2. Review the survey responses and evaluate collaboration opportunities
   3. Identify cities that wish to collaborate and make next contact in defining roles
2. Identify and showcase successful deployments
   1. Collect a number of AI-for-good use cases from around the world
   2. Study and analyze these use cases to distill frameworks, toolkits, and templates that facilitate other players deploying AI-for-good projects
3. Create a playbook for deployment
   1. Draft an open playbook for testing with cities
   2. Test the open playbook in a few cities, evaluate results, and improve the playbook
   3. Publish an open blueprint to be used by cities, governments, and all stakeholders involved in beneficial AI projects

We welcome participants from corporations, academia, industry, and government agencies that are interested in AI-Driven Innovation for Cities and People.

To learn more about the program and how to join the AI-Driven Innovation for Cities and People activity, please express your interest by sending an inquiry to the activity chair whose information can be found in the Contacts section.