AI and Robotics for the City: Imagining and Transforming Social Infrastructure in San Francisco, Yokohama, and Lviv

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This article looks at how existing and planned AI and robotics projects in three cities – San Francisco (United States), Yokohama (Japan), and Lviv (Ukraine) – aim to extend or build social infrastructure to achieve a particular desired vision of city life. The author has chosen contrasting cases both to highlight how particular cultures’ ways of thinking of the human-machine relationship matters for the kind of AI and robotics are envisioned and developed as well as to surface the core characteristics of AI and robotics-supported social infrastructure that transcend cultural, economic, and civic histories. San Francisco houses many of the entrepreneurs, software engineers, and multinationals that create AI and robotics in various markets, including applications for cities. Its proximity and relationship to Silicon Valley provides a “close to home” perspective of AI city imaginaries. Yokohama was selected as Japan’s “Future City” and offers a perspective of government-named and-organized experimentation in the realm of AI and robotics to achieve the so-called “Society 5.0”. Lviv provides a nearly opposite (to Yokohama) example in that the city is in its infancy envisioning how AI may transform its future, and grassroots organization drives the current projects.