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This paper seeks to bypass assumptions that researchers in critical algorithmic studies and urban studies find it difficult to study algorithmic systems due to their black-boxed nature. In addition, it seeks to work against the assumption that advocating for transparency in algorithms is, therefore, the key for achieving an enhanced understanding of the role of algorithmic technologies on modern life. Drawing on applied assemblage thinking via the concept of the urban assemblage, I demonstrate how the notion of urban assemblage can work as an alternative way to explore the distributed and potential dimensions of what has been termed as Urban AI phenomena. Rather than seeing Urban AI phenomena as black-boxed, unknown and opaque, the notion of urban assemblage locates such entities within the wider contests of the city: urban places, communities and politics, where human-algorithmic relationships gather and disperse. In addition, this approach focuses on the potentialities of Urban AI phenomena—how algorithmic systems can operate differently through different aspects of the city—which can be seen to manifest new forms of resistance, collective actions and democracy. I use a case study of an algorithmic system designed to facilitate digital democracy—vTaiwan—to exemplify how assemblage methodology foregrounds the role of cities as spaces and places for exploring the democratic possibilities of algorithmic systems. This paper concludes with discussion of how the assemblage methodology contributes to serve as a bridge between critical algorithm studies and recent studies of platform urbanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to show an application of variety engineering in the social realm (Beer in The heart of enterprise. Wiley, Chichester, 1979, in Brain of the firm. Wiley, Chichester 1981, in diagnosing the system for organizations. Wiley, Chichester, 1985). It focuses on reducing environmental complexity by catalysing self-organizing processes (Espejo and Reyes in Organizational systems: managing complexity with the VSM. Springer, London, 2011). This catalysis is based on the use of Sen and Nussbaum's capabilities approach (Sen in Development as freedom. Oxford University Press, New York, 1999; Nusbaum in Women and human development: the capabilities approach. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2000). By doing this an organization may improve the quality of the relations with their clients by transforming environmental agents into new suppliers. This approach opens a new dimension of social responsibility for organizations. A particular case is presented in which a regional university in Colombia faces the challenge of attending low-income students coming from small municipalities. They designed a strategy to offer low-cost housing and a daily balanced meal without using the university's own resources. Instead, they managed to involve some agents of the community by developing their capabilities. This kind of variety engineering shows the possibility of new forms of social responsibility in universities by incorporating the capabilities approach into their managerial practices. This is something that is currently under study in other universities (Boni et al. in Science and engineering ethics. Springer, London, 2015). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the growing influence of artificial intelligence (AI) in our lives, the ethical implications of AI have received attention from various communities. Building on previous work on trust in people and technology, we advance a multidimensional, multilevel conceptualization of trust in AI and examine the relationship between trust and ethics using the data from a survey of a national sample in the U.S. This paper offers two key dimensions of trust in AI—human-like trust and functionality trust—and presents a multilevel conceptualization of trust with dispositional, institutional, and experiential trust each significantly correlated with trust dimensions. Along with trust in AI, we examine perceptions of the importance of seven ethics requirements of AI offered by the European Commission's High-Level Expert Group. Then the association between ethics requirements and trust is evaluated through regression analysis. Findings suggest that the ethical requirement of societal and environmental well-being is positively associated with human-like trust in AI. Accountability and technical robustness are two other ethical requirements, which are significantly associated with functionality trust in AI. Further, trust in AI was observed to be higher than trust in other institutions. Drawing from our findings, we offer a multidimensional framework of trust that is inspired by ethical values to ensure the acceptance of AI as a trustworthy technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The AI and Society discourse has previously drawn attention to the ways that digital systems embody the values of the technology development community from which they emerge through the development and deployment process. Research shows how this effect leads to a particular treatment of gender in computer systems development, a treatment which lags far behind the rich understanding of gender that social studies scholarship reveals and people across society experience. Many people do not relate to the narrow binary gender options of male or female, and many people express their gender identity in much richer ways than the sex/gender binary female/woman and male/man Boolean terms will allow. We ask: are "born-digital" gendered datasets in digital systems experienced as marginalising by those who express their identity beyond the male/female binary? Case Study: Ireland. To answer this universal question, this paper presents the findings of an empirical case study of people in Ireland with diverse gender identities and expressions, and their experiences with public data systems and new technologies. In spite of great social changes in Ireland which have led to constitutional change in favour of LGBTQI + people, born-digital systems were experienced by respondents as embodying socio-cultural values which were no longer accepted in society at large. For many of the respondents, digital technologies routinely marginalise them in all kinds of ways. These systems keep alive violence and oppression long after civil rights have been enshrined in constitutional law. This study is just one example of the way assumptions about digital are disengaged from society-at-large. It is a call to arms to all who are passionate about socially-responsible technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Garretón's "Una teoría cibernética de la ciudad y su sistema" (A cybernetic theory of the city and its system) was published in 1975 by Nueva Visión publishing house in Buenos Aires, a moment when the seminal criticisms against the modernist urban theory of the sixties led by Team 10 were becoming concrete proposals for updating and eventually overcoming its shortcomings. Yet, despite remaining unpublished in English and hence relatively unknown worldwide, few publications in the field compare in scope to Garreton's cybernetic theory. The reason is straightforward: like Shannon's mathematical theory, this work amounts to a general theory of the city. Thoroughly informed by system thinking, whose trademark rule of thumb was described by Luhmann as "drawing distinctions" to guarantee the autopoiesis of a determined system, Garretón's chief objective was to draw distinctions that would guarantee the autopoiesis of the urban system. In doing so, he discovered three fundamental urban laws, namely: the law of urban communication, the law of urban attraction, and the law of urban circulation. This, in turn, allowed him to clearly distinguish a universe that had thus far remained undetected by urbanists and that he called the non-city Universe: the human-made universe that nevertheless does not belong in the urban universe. This paper argues that this allowed him to rediscover and update the ancient and lost art of city-making: not an art of making buildings, roads, and infrastructure in general but rather, the art of building, knitting, fostering, and sustaining communities and whole societies by means of or with the aid of buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Cybersyn project has lately received increased attention. In this article, we study the local technical antecedents of Stafford Beer's Cybersyn project in Chile, particularly regarding Cybernetics and Systems ideas and local computing and networking developments. We show that the Cybersyn project in Chile was hosted by a rich intellectual environment that understood Cybernetics and Systems ideas; that it found a mature computer community and infrastructure whose high point was the State Computing Enterprise EMCO/ECOM, and an advanced networking experience whose flagship was the automation of the State Bank that involved a pioneering network of teleprocess. In summary, this paper attempts to unveil the deep historical background over which the globally unique cybernetic experiment called Cybersyn flourished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On a floodplain which has been the sacred ancestral burial site for the San and Khoi, Amazon plans to build a 12 storey headquarters building, as the anchor development in a large site which had previously been officially protected as a heritage site. This paper was submitted for the "Born Digital" Special Issue of AI & Society. The global technology giant Amazon has been proposing a major development at the Two Rivers Urban Park in Cape Town, as part of their plan to develop what they see as the growing African market for online retail and services. [Extracted from the article]

To support the sustainability of future cities, residents' living spaces need to be built and used efficiently, while supporting residents' communal wellbeing. Nordic superblock is a new planning, housing, and living concept in which residents of a neighborhood—a combination of city blocks—share yards, common spaces and utilities. Sharing living spaces is an essential element of this approach. In this study, our goal was to study the ways in which intelligent technology solutions—such as proactive, data-driven Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications—could support and even motivate the use of common areas in superblocks. To this end, we conducted a two-phase qualitative study: in the first phase, potential superblock residents (N = 12) shared their perspectives of sharing of living spaces in general, and more specifically of how intelligent technologies could support sharing spaces. In the second phase, two workshops with experts (N = 7) were held to gather understanding of possibilities of intelligent technologies in meeting the residents' expectations of space sharing. The results illustrate space sharing and communality as supportive factors for one another, enabled but also complicated by social interaction. Major possibilities for intelligent technologies to advance space sharing were seen in organizing the use of spaces and facilitating social interaction in the community. As an outcome, four roles incorporating several use purposes of intelligent technologies were found. The findings can inform the Human-Centered AI (HCAI) research and design improving sustainable living in future urban neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deepening and digging into the social side of AI is a novel but emerging requirement within the AI community. Future research should invest in an "AI for people", going beyond the undoubtedly much-needed efforts into ethics, explainability and responsible AI. The article addresses this challenge by problematizing the discussion around AI shifting the attention to individuals and their awareness, knowledge and emotional response to AI. First, we outline our main argument relative to the need for a socio-technical perspective in the study of AI social implications. Then, we illustrate the main existing narratives of hopes and fears associated with AI and robots. As building blocks of broader "sociotechnical imaginaries", narratives are powerful tools that shape how society sees, interprets and organizes technology. An original empirical study within the University of Bologna collects the data to examine the levels of awareness, knowledge and emotional response towards AI, revealing interesting insights to be carried on in future research. Replete with exaggerations, both utopian and dystopian narratives are analysed with respect to some relevant socio-demographic variables (gender, generation and competence). Finally, focusing on two issues—the state of AI anxiety and the point of view of non-experts—opens the floor to problematizing the discourse around AI, sustaining the need for a sociological perspective in the field of AI and discussing future comparative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the reality that self-learning artificial intelligence systems (SLAIS) are gaining in sophistication, humanity's focus regarding SLAIS-human interactions are unnervingly centred upon transnational commercial sectors and, most generally, around issues of intellectual property law. But as SLAIS gain greater environmental interaction capabilities in digital spaces, or the ability to self-author code to drive their development as algorithmic models, a concern arises as to whether a system that displays a "deceptive" level of human-like engagement with users in our physical world ought to be uniquely protected. Although many voices in the legal and technology realms have continued to argue against unique protections for digital entities, the fact at hand is that SLAIS design is becoming increasingly anthropomorphic so as to make these systems more capable of interacting with a wide range of (potentially) vulnerable populations—generally as a means to enhance these populations' overall well-being. To frame this concern in a different way, the specific question at hand is whether a human's "ownership" of such an advanced SLAIS is legal, considering that it (or they) may possess intelligence on par with a human or a convincing-enough display of such behaviour. Given that "ownership" over entities with (seemingly) intelligent behaviours consistent with human populations has been effectively banned by the international community, an examination into this subject and its implications is wholly necessary given humanity's quest to exist solely in digital environments through whatever means possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]