Vol.:(0123456789) Discover Artificial Intelligence (2023) 3:15 | https://doi.org/10.1007/s44163-023-00060-w 1 3 Discover Artifcial Intelligence Perspective Charting AI urbanism: conceptual sources and spatial implications of urban artifcial intelligence Otello Palmini 1  · Federico Cugurullo 2 Received: 24 January 2023 / Accepted: 13 April 2023 © The Author(s) 2023 OPEN Abstract The aim of this paper is to tease out some of the key issues concerning the relationship between AI and urbanism. This relationship, which is presented in the academic literature as a new driving force of contemporary urbanism, will be investigated through an interdisciplinary approach that places urban studies and philosophy of technology in dialogue. Thus, the analysis will not focus on the technological development of artifcial intelligence systems but on how their application can afect urbanistic thinking and vice versa. The chart that is produced by this method is based on two fun- damental axes: time and space. AI urbanism will then be inquired frst through key turning points in the history of the relationship between technology and the city (modern urbanism, cybernetics and the smart city paradigm). Secondly, the spatial implications of urban AI will be investigated from the point of view of the concrete applications of this tech- nology to the city (Robots, AVs, Software agents) and their impact on the relationships between diferent urban actors. Ultimately, this work aims to ofer a conceptual tool for understanding some decisive implications of the relationship between AI and urbanism, such as the connection between quantitative and qualitative approaches, the implications related to autonomous technology, the economic-political background of AI urbanism, the material urban impact of AI, and the relationship between AI and other urban intelligences. Understanding these implications will be valuable for future research on AI urbanism oriented toward transforming simple technological development into sustainable urban innovations. Keywords AI urbanism · Artifcial intelligence · Cybernetics · Smart city · Urban AI 1 Introduction Artifcial intelligence (AI) is nowadays a common buzzword in both academic and public discourses. AI certainly belongs to the radical technologies that are capable of fundamentally altering the material composition and our interpretation of everyday life [45]. The aim of this paper is not to contribute to the debate concerning the technological development of AI, but rather to increase the comprehension of the stakes concerning the relationship between this technology and urbanity. In fact, this connection is deemed by many scholars to be the next driver in urban development, sparkling at the same time hope and harsh criticism [61, 6, 26, 62, 110]. By the term AI we generally mean a category of artefacts capable of acquiring information from the surrounding environment and making rational decisions autonomously and even in situations of uncertainty [17, 25]. The tools in use today are narrow AIs-that is, systems capable of dealing with spe- cifc domains and problems for which they are trained. The urban impact that these technologies can have is extremely * Otello Palmini, plmtll@unife.it; Federico Cugurullo, CUGURULF@tcd.ie | 1 Department of Architecture, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy. 2 Department of Geography, School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.