Empowering local communities using artificial intelligence

Yen-Chia Hsu; Ting-Hao 'Kenneth' Huang; Himanshu Verma; Andrea Mauri; Illah Nourbakhsh; Alessandro Bozzon

doi:10.1016/j.patter.2022.100449

Empowering local communities using artificial intelligence

Patterns (N Y). 2022 Mar 11;3(3):100449. doi: 10.1016/j.patter.2022.100449.

Authors

Yen-Chia Hsu¹, Ting-Hao 'Kenneth' Huang², Himanshu Verma¹, Andrea Mauri^{1

3}, Illah Nourbakhsh⁴, Alessandro Bozzon¹

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands.
² College of Information Sciences and Technology, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA.
³ Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
⁴ Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) applications can profoundly affect society. Recently, there has been extensive interest in studying how scientists design AI systems for general tasks. However, it remains an open question as to whether the AI systems developed in this way can work as expected in different regional contexts while simultaneously empowering local people. How can scientists co-create AI systems with local communities to address regional concerns? This article contributes new perspectives in this underexplored direction at the intersection of data science, AI, citizen science, and human-computer interaction. Through case studies, we discuss challenges in co-designing AI systems with local people, collecting and explaining community data using AI, and adapting AI systems to long-term social change. We also consolidate insights into bridging AI research and citizen needs, including evaluating the social impact of AI, curating community datasets for AI development, and building AI pipelines to explain data patterns to laypeople.

Keywords: applied research; artificial intelligence; community citizen science; community empowerment; human-computer interaction; social impact; sustainability.

Publication types

Review