AI in the street: scoping everyday observatories for public engagement with connected and automated urban environments
AI in the Street is a group project led by the University of Warwick, with the Universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, and King's College London, and with a non-profit partner, Careful Industries. Working with city-based AI innovation partners across sectors (automated mobility, smart cities, AI governance, art-science), each organisation will set up and trial a place-based, digital, and embodied intervention within an 'AI Street Observatory' to make situated effects of AI innovation visible to everyday publics.
The Cambridge AI Street Observatory will trial Access Data Walks, an ethnographic action research method, to assess frictions and opportunities in how 'connected and automated mobility' (CAM) in the 'smart city' of Cambridge meets the accessibility standards of disabled people. Working with the Greater Cambridge Partnership, a collaboration between local councils in the area, the Cambridge project will organise Access Data Walks to investigate individuals' interaction with the built environment to understand what makes CAM 'responsible' in its rollout. The Cambridge Street Observatory is led by Maya Indira Ganesh (LCFI) and Louise Hickman (Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy) and supported by an Arts and Humanities Research Council grant under the BRAID Bridging Responsible AI Divides program.
