When it comes to the Hollywood-like buzz around AI, we are prone to depicting it almost like a sci-fi technology that enables human-like robots or artificial brains. Often, governments, policy makers, small business owners, and community members are hesitant when it comes to trusting this technology and integrating it within our daily lives for the benefit of the community.

Within the private sector, AI has already enabled technological advancements that have reshaped the landscape of our modern-day society. From manufacturing to finance to healthcare, AI has proven to be a powerful tool for change, revolutionizing industries and streamlining processes. However, as we begin the journey of integrating AI within the public sector, we wonder whether society is truly ready to accept AI in co-designing the communities of tomorrow through enhanced resident engagement. If so, is AI ready to take on this endeavor and how? Let’s take a brief look at the different approaches to AI integration.

1. A Quantitative Approach

Big Data has already proven that it can benefit humans by optimizing and accelerating medical treatment advancement through disease tracking and the creation of new drugs and vaccines. It is widely applied for exposing violence and human rights infringements and strengthening cybersecurity. Advanced data analytics (AI-enabled algorithms for pattern identification, clustering, classification, and forecasting) have immense potential for leveraging innovative ways to implement the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to transform our towns and cities into smart co-designed, inclusive communities.

The downside of Big Data lies in its tendency to absorb the ideologies of those who manipulate it, meaning that it enables biases when it comes to gender, ethnicity, and social status. A simple method to combat this would be a close collaboration between data scientists, AI specialists, policy experts, data designers, and the general public in setting up regulations, like the EU AI Act, to enable an ethical approach and guidelines for using data in a more responsible, transparent, and ethical way. By including the resident in the middle, it fosters policy debates, influences civic decisions, and informs designs to ensure that people’s voices are reflected in the applied policies.

2. A Qualitative Approach

This refers to designing systems in which multiple AI agents collaborate, supporting autonomous planning and decision making and knowledge-based reasoning and logic. This implies translating cognitive processes into digital format cognitive processes. Often it is limited when it comes to dealing with unpredictability and having to consider the multitude of dependencies and contexts, especially when it comes to governance. An example of the qualitative approach would be creating a digital “twin city,” which would act as a digital representation of a city. This digital twin would be a closed-world environment consisting of a knowledge base about the city and an inference engine, which supports experts in exploring various issues and making decisions, offering explanations and clear visualizations, or having a dialog in a natural language.

3. A Hybrid Approach

This approach takes the best of both the quantitative and qualitive approaches and is widely applied. When it comes to community engagement, one cannot only rely on survey and data analysis about a population to determine the way different policies and projects affect them. Hence, the hybrid approach is not only a reactive approach, but a proactive approach as well.

We cannot talk about communities without considering interaction between their members and local governments. There are two central aspects that ground the concept of a community: well-being and care. While well-being is concerned with ensuring that the needs of an individual are met (material, emotional, social, and political), care is directed toward the capacities required to ensure the welfare of the members of a community, taking into account the interdependencies between human needs and the importance of ensuring equitable treatment. One must consider the lived experience and the local knowledge of individuals from a community to challenge and ultimately influence public decision making, strategies, and implementation of processes.

One can argue that there are already software platforms out there enabling a direct and real-time communication channel between policy makers and the people that benefit from their policies through the use of traditional virtual assistants or chatbots. However, most of the time these programs fail to address the public’s need for a human-like connection, for storytelling, for feeling heard, listened to, and understood. Traditional face-to-face interaction, town hall meetings, and surveys have also failed in a society where we are always on the go, where we need everything now, and where we have to optimize and change in order to thrive.

Through the use of AI, and specifically Generative AI, based on large language models or LLMs (the same technology used by tools such as ChatGPT), one can go beyond the limited capabilities of traditional assistants and chatbots by actually leveraging an AI agent with a human-like intelligence and communication style. These AI agents can integrate seamlessly into collaborative platforms, encourage inclusiveness, and empower humans to become co-designers in urban communities, participating actively in decision making. Imagine a transformed participatory budgeting process in which AI-enabled agents interact and assist residents in the co-design process, acting as facilitators between policy makers and community members in a combination of digital and physical interaction.

Seeing AI in Action

One concrete example of civic engagement transformed by AI into a unique experience is a solution called The School of Possibilities, which my team built for Youth Data Collaborative, an initiative consisting of an international group of scholars, technologists, designers, organizers, artists, and youth activists committed to using data to advance youth well-being in Romanian communities. From the idea of a youth-centered effort to reimagine education, The School of Possibilities (SoP) platform combines a digital and human presence for human-AI interactions. It includes life-like characters inspired by the school system (talking textbooks, exam papers, and compassionate teachers) to create a safe space for people to speak out about bullying or other experiences they have at school (both positive and negative), ensuring that they feel heard by using a playful approach to boost participation and encourage innovation and creativity.

If we extend the example to local governments, these types of phygital (physical + digital) engagement platforms will make it easier for city officials to connect with their community members, creating a more inclusive urban design framework and making it more exciting for everyone involved. The collected data is completely anonymous, maintaining resident privacy and analyzed by experts and stakeholders.

Coming back to the example, any specific data that could lead to the identification of the opinion maker was taken out and the public data was then projected on a separate interface and onto to a big public screen displaying general insights extracted from conversations in real time, showcasing contributors’ anonymous opinions and exchanges of stories.

Over 300 high school students interacted with the SoP prototype for a period of three days, addressing important topics related to education, the school system, and school’s impact on their mental health, as well as difficulties and opportunities for students to get involved, to speak out, and to find solutions. Moreover, it allowed us, through direct observation and AI-based data analysis, to gain a better overview of how to construct systems that can ensure engagement of people in community initiatives along with well-functioning institutional listening.

Hence, such initiatives can be extended to create AI decision-making frameworks that empower residents to actively participate in co-creating urban landscapes augmented by AI. Local governments could analyze public sentiments and trends to inform decision making, as well as build trust and foster meaningful collaborations with the public.

Other similar examples are virtual public services providers enabled by AI that are capable of understanding laws and regulations. Such service providers can offer support to public servants and residents in dealing with their daily tasks such as claims filings, completing forms or simply requesting information, fraud activity detection, and offering clarifications. At the request of a local government partner company, we built the first public law AI assistant in Romania capable of understanding and interpreting the application of various law constructs in different local contexts, offering recommendations for public servants to extend to their residents.

For example, we asked the AI-enabled virtual public servant to assist with various requests in the urban planning department, one of which being to list the exact papers required to obtain a fence construction permit. The AI not only provided the list of documents and forms, but also offered information on regulations or restrictions that applied at a local level based on the specific regulations voted on by the local council.

AI Avatars

AI agents can also be enhanced with a visual appearance through an avatar that can interact in a more human-like manner, mimicking expressions and being able to understand emotions. These AI avatars can serve multiple purposes in a smart city and can even be grouped in collaborative multi-agent systems capable of interpreting, sharing, and co-creating with human participation.

The following are some other real-world solutions that we have implemented that can be extended to the public sector:

• An AI moderator that delivered the welcoming speech at a renowned conference. The avatar not only has the functionality of delivering audio messages, but also has the capability of understanding the debated topics, summarizing panel discussions, creating short bios and speaker descriptions, and the possibility to engage in meaningful conversations on various topics. These avatars could be used in public debates, town hall meetings, and community events.

• We are currently working on an AI agent capable of raising awareness about the dangers of illegal substance use and drug abuse to teenagers. The AI avatar will engage in meaningful conversations with students and will be able to adapt to their emotions and moods, understanding their needs and expressing information in an easy to comprehend way. The avatar is capable of communicating through voice and text, offering useful insights, and directing troubled teenagers toward specific organizations in their community that can further assist them.

• Similar AI-enabled avatars can be used in social assistance, such as helping the elderly and keeping them company while looking after their well-being, or entertaining children at hospitals, providing compassion, empathy, and support.

Endless Possibilities for Local Government

AI agents can even be used in interpreting community-gathered data and assist human decision makers in ensuring a holistic view when it comes to implementing different community projects. When it comes to community engagement, avatars can excel at connecting communities, capable of interacting with residents, listening to their problems and opinions, and offering reassurance and useful information. They can represent the voice of groups of people or policy makers and engage in meaningful dialogues to bring change.

Further, such avatars can be included in policy-making processes, co-creating side by side with humans. The voices of different members from diverse community areas can be represented by AI agents helping to create urban policies that directly affect different urban infrastructures. AI can analyze vast amounts of data to understand individual community members’ preferences and interests. With this information, AI-powered platforms could deliver personalized content and communication, ensuring that each community member receives relevant information, updates, and messages.

The excitement over the benefits of AI to our society must be taken with precaution and responsibility in its application, particularly in public services, where a delicate balance between innovation and ethical considerations must be maintained. Privacy concerns, algorithmic bias, and digital divide issues must be carefully addressed to ensure that AI technologies are deployed in a fair, transparent, and equitable manner. Additionally, fostering trust and building rapport between residents and AI-driven systems is paramount to the success of these initiatives.

To conclude, artificial intelligence has the potential to redefine the way both local governments and their residents get involved within co-designing and implementing community initiatives. Resident engagement reimagined with AI through a form of warm interaction between humans and technology, setting aside traditional approaches, paves the way for new possibilities. It isn’t just about embracing innovation; it’s about building stronger, more resilient, inclusive, and responsible communities for tomorrow.

Learn more about AI for local government here. ICMA is a member of the Government AI Coalition, which provides materials and templates for local government agencies looking to get started with AI policy.

 

A. D. Goron, PhD, is an AI advisor and founder of AVA Research.