The Possibilities of Better Cities With AI and Robotics

I’m nervous about the future of AI and robotics, but I’m also excited about the positive impacts of it on society. I like to think about more ideal cities — cities that are beautiful and better to inhabit. It’s usually a money issue as to why some of those thoughts are unrealistic, but perhaps some of those limitations go away when we have cheaper manual labor.

I think of ambitious public projects, like burying freeways, building more parks and micro-parks, maintaining those parks and microparks, constructing pedestrian and bike paths, small-scale farming within cities, and wonder if we’ll be able to make more of those projects feasible with the reduction in construction and labor costs with a vast supply of human-like bots that can do the work that currently requires humans. Of course, this requires us sharing the benefits of these systems that have reduced expenses, instead of it just going into the pockets of those who own the bots. We should probably be working on frameworks now to accommodate that goal, probably at the state and local levels.