United Nations sustainable urbanisation body UN-Habitat and Canadian academic deep learning research centre Mila collaborated on a white paper on how artificial intelligence (AI) can help develop socially and environmentally sustainable cities.

Aimed at supporting urban managers and practitioners, the white paper, part of UN-Habitat’s strategy to promote a people-centred approach to digital transformation, outlines the current value add and challenges of AI in cities and provides practical recommendations to improve the way in which AI is used. It promotes sustainable cities and inclusive communities.

The document covers urban applications of AI across a wide range of sectors including energy, mobility, public safety and healthcare, and covers themes including the trade-offs and risks of AI, specific approaches, and applications of urban AI in urban governance.

The paper was unveiled last week during a panel discussion at the 2022 Urban Economy Forum (UEF) in Toronto.

“AI, like any other technology, can be a force that widens or reduces social gaps depending on how it is applied,” said Maimunah Mohd Sharif, under-secretary-general and executive director at UN-Habitat. “We have a collective responsibility to appropriately use and integrate AI and ensure that there are no unintended consequences.”

The goal of the white paper is to provide local authorities with the guidance they need to weigh up the pros and cons of AI in fostering sustainable local communities. Local authorities regularly make decisions about AI that impact people’s lives, and need the tools to assess where and for whom AI brings added value and whether it is appropriate in a given context. The paper serves as a knowledge resource to help guide decision making with respect to the positive engagement with and use of AI for smart and people centred sustainable cities and human settlements.

“Like any other transformative opportunity, integrating AI into urban environments comes with challenges and risks that must be taken and tackled seriously for AI to benefit societies,” said Valérie Pisano, CEO of Mila. “This white paper could be a very useful tool for local authorities who, like UN-Habitat and Mila, are committed to the responsible development of AI.”

UN-Habitat is the United Nations programme working towards a better urban future. Its mission is to promote socially and environmentally sustainable human settlements development and the achievement of adequate housing for all. It works in more than 90 countries to promote transformative change in cities and human settlements through knowledge, policy advice, technical assistance and collaborative action.

Founded by Yoshua Bengio of the University of Montreal, Mila is an artificial intelligence research institute that brings together more than 1000 researchers specialising in machine learning. Based in Montreal, Mila’s mission is to be a global hub for scientific advances that inspire innovation and development of AI. Mila is a non-profit organisation that contributes to the field of deep learning, particularly in language modelling, machine translation, object recognition and generative models.