Socially Intelligent Civic Infrastructure and Challenges for AI Ethics

Abstrat

Advances in technology are leading to a shift from traditional to smart civic infrastructure, one driven by data and seeking to optimize resource usage. I posit that this shift, though desirable, is not enough. I motivate the conception of socially intelligent civic infrastructure, one that adaptively deals with multiparty requirements, is user-centric, satisfices individual and societal objectives, and provides affordances for cooperation. In so doing, the envisioned infrastructure supports and benefits from users' social intelligence by revealing to themselves and others the externalities of their decisions and promoting prosocial attitudes (empathy) and behaviors (cooperation) between users. As envisioned, socially intelligent civic infrastructure would not only serve user needs but also shape their preferences toward societally desirable outcomes such as sustainability.