EU Parliament study: increasingly pervasive technologies, development must be based on ethics and people
The application of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to the development of so-called ‘smart cities’ (or ‘intelligent cities’) may entail serious risks, both for individuals and for the delicate balance of territorial cohesion. A real gap could be created, in terms of development and social and economic opportunities, between individual city areas, between cities and their suburban contexts, and between the various cities in a given territory. These are the findings of the recent study “Artificial Intelligence and Urban Development” commissioned by the European Parliament.
The research does not fail to highlight the positive aspects of smart cities. AI offers enormous potential for socio-economic development and improving the quality of individual and collective life (for example, mobility, waste management, energy efficiency, etc.). However, artificial intelligence presents potential risks mainly linked to its ability to collect, process and transform huge amounts of data, also exploiting synergies with other technologies (Big Data, cloud, Internet of Things).
In this context, data protection represents a key driver for the assessment and mitigation of risks of various kinds, ranging from cyber-security policies to the influence of errors and biases based on data collection and processing, which can have serious repercussions at individual and collective level: from the so-called ‘black-box’ risk, linked to the opacity or even total impenetrability of automated processes, to the ethical implications connected to AI decision-making processes which, unlike human ones, can be completely divorced from moral implications, empathy, reference to the human context (lack-of-value); from the reputational risks due to the uncontrolled sharing and dissemination of personal data, to the inequalities connected to the different opportunities to access data; up to the excessive invasiveness of technological control in daily lives.
In order to fully exploit the potential of AI while respecting people’s privacy, the study proposes a number of operational guidelines: careful cooperation between institutions; the development of policies and practices focused on precise regulation of data access and sharing; timely and timely adaptation of legal and regulatory frameworks; and the development of adequate skills and capacities (including in terms of data protection) by those called upon to manage the development and governance of processes and technologies related to smart cities.