
AI's Role in Our Urban Future - arshakn
https://adversarial.ai/blog/pentagon
======
bamboozled
_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
Why should the tech companies give away their hard earned money? We don't live
in a communist dystopia.

~~~
bamboozled
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
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-...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/11/03/141943008/when-
governments-pay-people-to-have-babies)

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
There's no population bomb?
[http://blog.dssresearch.com/?p=229](http://blog.dssresearch.com/?p=229)

~~~
spiderfarmer
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
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
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.

------
saycheese
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
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.

------
jsemrau
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.

