5 ms·

AI's Role in Our Urban Future

49 points by arshakn 10y ago

saycheese 10y ago
HN thread covering the Pentagon video: "Pentagon Video Warns of Unavoidable Dystopian Future for World's Biggest Cities" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12721423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12721423
- niels_olson 10y ago
  Can't vote on those, and it's five hysterical pacifist comments who conveniently forget that the DoD also owns the "homeless missions" by default, and complained when Obama didn't send more troops to Allepo. Look, this video is aimed at mid-level to senior officers: leaders tasked to keep their people alive and executing the mission (humanitarian aid, asset extraction, etc.). This is a think piece for people who will go into harm's way.
bamboozled 10y ago
Although the problems discussed are politically and socially complex, some of the issues highlighted may be avoidable through the use of AI. This is the issue with the tech world right now, the major corporations developing AI have so much of everyone's money they should be giving back enough to house and educate and feed all the starving children in the world, TODAY. There is little complexity to any of it, except greed. No one single person got rich on their own, no one got to where they are except for off the backs of others. The current narrative is that AI will help people. It will potentially cure diseases and all the rest of it of the non-sense. The truth is, what little AI we have have is going to be another tool used to corporations to raise more money, automate people out of a job, control and snoop on people and continue to serve a tiny percentage of mankind. The betterment narrative is how smart good people get sucked working on this stuff or how they use it justify their positions, this is why people fear the idea of a singularity, it's a projection of our own crazy and selfish ideals. I trust there are good intentions behind the original post, but we need to stop relying on technology as our savior and putting our faith in the (non-existent) AI God and take care of each other right now with all the capability we already have. Some people think technology is where the brave new world begins, regrettably, it seems truly sharing wealth and giving back is an even more radical and impossible goal. I'm not talking about ride sharing either. Also, that's a Pentagon video, take it with a grain of salt
- maverick_iceman 10y ago
  Why should the tech companies give away their hard earned money? We don't live in a communist dystopia.
  - bamboozled 10y ago
    Because when Google first launched it used free and open software, because they got plenty of free stuff. They bootstrapped from others hard earned work and they don't pay a cent of tax for operating in my country. Don't bring communism into it, no one said they're not allowed to make some profit, but they must give back.
milesf 10y ago
I remember as a teenager hearing in the 80's about "The Population Bomb", and idea popularized by the book of the same name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb. It didn't happen. In fact, we are facing a crisis in the world where many countries are not seeing their populations replacing themselves because families are not having enough babies http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/11/03/141943008/when-governments-pay-people-to-have-babies http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/11/03/141943008/when-... Societies and cities are complex entities, as are economies. Perhaps "premature optimization" is a problem in civics just as it is in software development. Better to solve real problems rather than those that might or might not happen.
- animex 10y ago
  There's no population bomb? http://blog.dssresearch.com/?p=229 http://blog.dssresearch.com/?p=229
  - spiderfarmer 10y ago
    The population growth will continue to decline as more people are lifted out of poverty. It might take a while and a large part of the world might not notice it right now, but it's happening. It's (relatively) not long now before we will see a shrinking world population.
    - Mister_Y 10y ago
      Yes you're right, but also the richer a country is the more resources it needs. So I think there should be some limits in population growth for certain countries and areas. Also, we have to note that it's not that we're overpopulated but we're living in just a few places of our planet, that's why we have issues I believe
      - spiderfarmer 10y ago
        There's also an enormous waste of resources. In my small delta country (the Netherlands) an acre of soil could yield in some cases 5000 times the amount of crops when compared to barren regions like Afghanistan, with (due to automation) very little effort. There's plenty of water, perfect temperatures and very vertile soil. It's not a coincidence that the Netherlands is the worlds #2 agricultural exporter. But there's an enormous lobby to convert more and more acres back to unmanaged nature. In the grand scheme of things this is beyond stupid, but when you're living here you might enjoy a walk through a nature reserve better than a walk through fields full of corn.
jsemrau 10y ago
Even though the article is not that well structured and if you exchange machine learning with data analysis it would read same less the 'fanciness' of the term, Expert systems will have a significant impact on urban life. If we look into street light patterns or parking control systems it is obvious. For the underdeveloped places like Jakarta, Delhi, or the places mentioned in the article data-driven urban planning and to some extent urban-planning-as-a-service systems will surely help the decision makers where to build which part of infrastructure.

49 points by arshakn 10y ago

HN thread covering the Pentagon video: "Pentagon Video Warns of Unavoidable Dystopian Future for World's Biggest Cities" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12721423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12721423

niels_olson 10y ago
Can't vote on those, and it's five hysterical pacifist comments who conveniently forget that the DoD also owns the "homeless missions" by default, and complained when Obama didn't send more troops to Allepo. Look, this video is aimed at mid-level to senior officers: leaders tasked to keep their people alive and executing the mission (humanitarian aid, asset extraction, etc.). This is a think piece for people who will go into harm's way.

bamboozled 10y ago

Although the problems discussed are politically and socially complex, some of the issues highlighted may be avoidable through the use of AI. This is the issue with the tech world right now, the major corporations developing AI have so much of everyone's money they should be giving back enough to house and educate and feed all the starving children in the world, TODAY. There is little complexity to any of it, except greed. No one single person got rich on their own, no one got to where they are except for off the backs of others. The current narrative is that AI will help people. It will potentially cure diseases and all the rest of it of the non-sense. The truth is, what little AI we have have is going to be another tool used to corporations to raise more money, automate people out of a job, control and snoop on people and continue to serve a tiny percentage of mankind. The betterment narrative is how smart good people get sucked working on this stuff or how they use it justify their positions, this is why people fear the idea of a singularity, it's a projection of our own crazy and selfish ideals. I trust there are good intentions behind the original post, but we need to stop relying on technology as our savior and putting our faith in the (non-existent) AI God and take care of each other right now with all the capability we already have. Some people think technology is where the brave new world begins, regrettably, it seems truly sharing wealth and giving back is an even more radical and impossible goal. I'm not talking about ride sharing either. Also, that's a Pentagon video, take it with a grain of salt

maverick_iceman 10y ago
Why should the tech companies give away their hard earned money? We don't live in a communist dystopia.
- bamboozled 10y ago
  Because when Google first launched it used free and open software, because they got plenty of free stuff. They bootstrapped from others hard earned work and they don't pay a cent of tax for operating in my country. Don't bring communism into it, no one said they're not allowed to make some profit, but they must give back.

milesf 10y ago

I remember as a teenager hearing in the 80's about "The Population Bomb", and idea popularized by the book of the same name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb. It didn't happen. In fact, we are facing a crisis in the world where many countries are not seeing their populations replacing themselves because families are not having enough babies http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/11/03/141943008/when-governments-pay-people-to-have-babies http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/11/03/141943008/when-... Societies and cities are complex entities, as are economies. Perhaps "premature optimization" is a problem in civics just as it is in software development. Better to solve real problems rather than those that might or might not happen.

animex 10y ago
There's no population bomb? http://blog.dssresearch.com/?p=229 http://blog.dssresearch.com/?p=229
- spiderfarmer 10y ago
  The population growth will continue to decline as more people are lifted out of poverty. It might take a while and a large part of the world might not notice it right now, but it's happening. It's (relatively) not long now before we will see a shrinking world population.
  - Mister_Y 10y ago
    Yes you're right, but also the richer a country is the more resources it needs. So I think there should be some limits in population growth for certain countries and areas. Also, we have to note that it's not that we're overpopulated but we're living in just a few places of our planet, that's why we have issues I believe
    - spiderfarmer 10y ago
      There's also an enormous waste of resources. In my small delta country (the Netherlands) an acre of soil could yield in some cases 5000 times the amount of crops when compared to barren regions like Afghanistan, with (due to automation) very little effort. There's plenty of water, perfect temperatures and very vertile soil. It's not a coincidence that the Netherlands is the worlds #2 agricultural exporter. But there's an enormous lobby to convert more and more acres back to unmanaged nature. In the grand scheme of things this is beyond stupid, but when you're living here you might enjoy a walk through a nature reserve better than a walk through fields full of corn.

jsemrau 10y ago

Even though the article is not that well structured and if you exchange machine learning with data analysis it would read same less the 'fanciness' of the term, Expert systems will have a significant impact on urban life. If we look into street light patterns or parking control systems it is obvious. For the underdeveloped places like Jakarta, Delhi, or the places mentioned in the article data-driven urban planning and to some extent urban-planning-as-a-service systems will surely help the decision makers where to build which part of infrastructure.