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New short article “Civic Urban Al as a Pedagogical Challenge”

About a year ago, I wrote an invited contribution for Media and Culture student journal BLIK, with the title “Civic Urban Al as a Pedagogical Challenge”. It is bases on the work that I’ve been doing with several colleagues, and that has been published in Mediapolis recently. This week I received this nice-looking hardcopy in the mail. Thanks Alya Khairunissa and BLIK team! Civic Urban Al as a Pedagogical Challenge Michiel de Lange Abstract With the rise of applications of Artificial Intelligence in urban spaces, cities become further subjected to the logics of digital platforms and Big Tech interests. In […] Read More

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About testing AI in cyber-physical settings

IEEE has an article on real-world testing of AI systems ‘in the wild’. An interesting new development in cyber-physical systems. The article describes some of the experiments run “by Andon Labs, an AI safety company based in San Francisco that puts AI agents in charge of real-world operations and watches what happens.” These experiments take place in physical urban spaces like consumer retail shops, cafés, radio studios, etc. Here, AI agents created by e.g. Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI have to manage that specific situation. They often fail spectacularly: “Their spectacular and absurd failures have won the company plenty of attention.” Why interesting? First, AI agents are is […] Read More

Credit: Luke Hespanhol, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
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New article published about “Civic Urban AI” in Mediapolis

  Commuters on a train. Credit: Luke Hespanhol, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0; not covered by this article’s CC BY-NC-ND licence Just out: a new article co-authored with Luke Hespanhol (University of Sydney) and Nanna Verhoeff (Utrecht University). This contribution is part of the special dossier in Mediapolis journal on The Synthetic City, edited by Scott Rodgers, Helena Atteneder, Lou Therese Brandner, Marcos Dias, Diogo P. Henriques and Sara Trentham-Black. This contribution proposes the concept of Civic Urban AI as a lens to highlight “learning together” in situated entanglements of AI, urban and human agencies. Through this concept of Civic Urban AI […] Read More

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“How algorithms are making our environments bland”

Hey, it’s been a while since the last post… Interesting short read on The Conversation by Joanna Gibson, about how algorithmic culture is pushing genericness in urban design and culture. I’m thinking about the connection of these kind of observations – this is by no means the first article to observe this development – to my latest joint research project on urban resilience. Resilience in urban settings, we note, is in part resulting from variation and differentiation. Like in evolution theory, heterogeneity on a larger scale is a factor is long-term survival and success. Hence, I believe this genericness mat […] Read More

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Leonardo Electronic Almanac special issue on ‘Urban Interfaces’ restored

Several people informed us that the link of our special issue in Leonardo Electronic Almanac from our research group on urban interfaces from 2019 (Leonardo Electronic Almanac issue 22, no. 4) is down. Thanks to the wonderful archive.org, we’ve managed to restore both the individual contributions as well as taken the effort (thanks Elle!) to produce a collated version of the issue in full. Both can be accessed via this Surfdrive link: https://surfdrive.surf.nl/s/5NFz6Die3C5dWNZ.

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Algorithmic rent pricing scheme axed

In two earlier posts I reblogged about a RealPage collusion scheme to jack up rent prices. After some time, Ars Technica now reports on a pending court settlement that requires RealPage to change how its software algorithm pushes up prices and favors the interests of landlords over renters. if a court approves the deal, RealPage has agreed to update its software so that rival landlords cannot access “competitively sensitive information to determine rental prices in runtime operation.” Additionally, RealPage will “remove or redesign features that limited price decreases or aligned pricing between competing users of the software.” And the company […] Read More

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User-generated surveillance: Ring doorbells gets even creepier

In yet another update to the Amazon Ring doorbell series, Ars Technica reports that Amazon is now partnering with Flock Safety. Flock’s payoff is “Shaping the Future of Safety, Together” and touts itself as : At its core, Flock Safety is an American company — founded by American entrepreneurs, manufacturing U.S. products that help Americans stay safe and thrive. We believe that everyone has a right to feel safe in this country.  On the side: quite the feat to cram 4 ‘America first’ maga dogwhistles in one sentence. The basic idea is that users are harnessed to assist in investigations, […] Read More

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Spanish national government crackdown on vacation rental platforms

Dutch news channel NOS reports that the Spanish national government is taking down over 50.000 vacation rentals from online platforms. In Spain over the last few years there has been increasing discontent with the popular vacation rental platforms. People consider these platforms to drive up rent and housing prices, to corrode local social cohesion, and in general make popular cities unlivable and overcrowded with mass tourism. Airbnb, the largest of these vacation rental platforms, has said it will actively comply.

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Shedding light on ‘Dark Kitchen’ platform economy

Several Dutch news outlets, like local Amsterdam news channel AT5 and National news channel NOS, report on the terrible circumstances of Indian laborers in a so-called ‘dark kitchen’ in Weesp. A dark kitchen – like a dark store – is a restaurant without visitors, serving only online orders and home deliveries. A recent insurrection by the Arbeidsinspectie (Labor inspection) revealed three Indian workers without a permit who had to work 6 days a week for a very low wage paid in cash, and had to sleep in the restaurant itself, with one person even staying in a cramped storage cupboard. […] Read More

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The rise of super-apps and the erasure of friction?

A few years ago i had a talented student who did an internship for Amsterdam municipality, researching the rise of super-apps and their potentials for the city. At that time I had to admit that I hadn’t heard of the term super-apps. Right now it’s everywhere except ‘here’ (in my case the Netherlands). At least, if you have to believe Rest of World, reporting on a new platform named Careem that is popular on the Gulf States. Unlike Western markets, where Google, Apple, and Meta maintain separate app ecosystems with strict integration limits, in countries like the United Arab Emirates […] Read More

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GenAI video slop fueling urban fears

404 Media report on a phenomenon that appears to be on the rise: the use of GenAI videos on a variety of platforms about highly politicized situations in cities for political purposes. In this case, video materials were spread on TikTok using Google’s VEO AI video generator. This videos are suggesting that in Washington DC the issue of homeless people is running out of control, coinciding with recent Trump rants and his longer running agenda to accuse large (and mostly DEM voting) cities of gross mismanagement. AI generated representations of urban decline and lawlessness thus are mobilized for a ‘politics […] Read More

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Questioning the use of camera drones during protests in Utrecht

The Dutch city of Utrecht has used camera drones during demonstrations seven times out of 522 total in 2024, according to tech news website Tweakers. This is part of wider developments of using surveillance tech in urban contexts. Questions about privacy, facial recognition and face culture, the right to anonymity and political freedom are obvious, as are questions about potential bias in who may differ hands from these technologies. Not addressed in the article ( in Dutch) is the provenance of these drones. Dutch police are often using Chinese made drones from DJI, raising further issues around data souvereignty and […] Read More

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California ban on algorithmic rental pricing

(This one was in Drafts for a while) The Markup reports on a state ban on algorithmic pricing of rental homes. Easy to view this from a classical Marxist perspective as a question of ownership of capital. Below is an interesting observation from the article itself, about how current legislation is driven by the position of owners and how favors the interests of a few rather than the many: The recent ranks of California legislators, however, have included few renters: As of 2019, CalMatters could find only one state lawmaker who did not own a home — and found that more than […] Read More

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Dutch supermarket Jumbo ends AI surveillance

Meanwhile, more uplifting news from the Netherlands. National Dutch newspaper Telegraaf reports that the Netherlands’ 2nd biggest supermarket chain Jumbo terminates their experiment with AI powered in-store surveillance (about which I blogged earlier this year). The experiment started because of high instances of shoplifting, likely driven by the rise of the self-scan checkout taking over from the human cashier. One reason why i find this new interesting is that it can be read as signaling a decrease in the unbridled enthusiasm for all things ‘AI’. Perhaps the tide is turning on the unlimited business promises of AI driven smart technologies? […] Read More

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Algorithmic friendships-as-a-service in the postpandemic city

Allie Volpe for Vox had a very personal piece about using mobile friendship apps for making new friends. She used Bumble for Friends, Timeleft, and Hey! Vina. As has been observed, dating apps have not turned out to fulfill the promises of finding the perfect love “one swipe away”. So how does that work out for finding friendships? On the one hand this seems a slightly less charged activity, since it is less exclusive (having more than one friend being perceived as more common than having more than one romantic partner). But the awkwardness remains big, it appears. At 32, I find […] Read More

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Urban AI making algorithmic sorting part of everyday life

Google Maps is adding ‘AI-powered’ recommendations to its Maps, Earth and Waze products, according to a somewhat older article on Ars Technica. By including its in-house AI Gemini, Google wants to improve the experience and provide more relevant recommendations to the “2 billion people who use Google Maps every month”.  “A lot of those features that we’ve introduced over the years have been thanks to AI,” said Chris Phillips,VP and general manager of Geo at Google. “Think of features like Lens and maps. When you’re on a street corner, you can lift up your phone and look, and through your […] Read More

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Human labor mobilized in hybrid space

Human labor has been unwittingly harvested and exploited for some time in online spaces. Think training AI models through solving Captchas or on massive amounts of creative works. There has been relatively little attention to the same logic in hybrid urban/digital spaces and situations. 404 Media reports that Pokémon Go players have been contributing data to train a so-called AI “Large Geospatial Model”. This model should serve automated systems to navigate the real world and power movement of robots. Niantic explains that a Large Geospatial Model, or LGM, aims to do the same for the physical world, a technology it […] Read More

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Dutch holiday parks illegally used facial recognition

Via NOS The Netherlands Data Protection Authority (DPA, or Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, AP) have looked into the illegitimate use of facial recognition technologies by Dutch holiday parks. Eight out of the eight parks investigated have indeed used such technology to allow or deny individuals access to park swimming pools or playgrounds. The use of facial recognition technologies in the Netherlands is strictly regulated. In the cases of these holiday parks, there was a clear breech of those rules. Seven out of these eight have by now changed their ways, one still hasn’t by the time of the AP press release. Yet […] Read More

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How social media spread misinformation among city migrants

The Markup together with The Guardian features an interesting story about how TikTok helps to spread misleading narratives to Senegalese migrants about how to live a new life in New York City. Documented spoke with five Senegalese men who migrated to New York City in the past year who said that TikTok played a significant role in their decision to make the arduous journey to the U.S. Like thousands of other migrants who have made their way to the U.S. from China, Latin America and West Africa, these five men were inspired by testimonials from other migrants they saw on TikTok about […] Read More