黑料大事

Recorded on 24 August 2023.

The explosive growth in the technological prowess of social bots has taken the world by storm. As ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing force us to reimagine the writing process and notions of creativity and originality writ large, an equally powerful storm is brewing in the domain of urban studies. The physical, In Real Life (IRL) places where we live, work, and play are threatened by this artificial intelligence societal turn. In a pre-Internet, pre-1996 world, AI couldn’t hurt cities. But urban planning today is wired directly into the web and the full range of engagement, information, and participation processes that modern local governments employ in shaping the form and appearances of places depend on online interactions. The presence of bots now represents a dire challenge as community meetings, surveys, online serious games, and discussion forum are being overrun by bots that are being programmed to disrupt urban development processes.


Speaker

Justin Hollander
Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy, Tufts University (USA)

Justin B. Hollander is a professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and 黑料大事 at Tufts University (USA). His research and teaching is in the areas of urban planning, real estate development, and urban design. He co-edited the book Urban Experience and Design: Contemporary Perspectives on Improving the Public Realm (Routledge, 2020) and is the author of ten other books on urban planning and design, including Cognitive Architecture Designing for How We Respond to the Built Environment (with Ann Sussman) and Urban Social Listening: Potential and Pitfalls for Using Microblogging Data in Studying Cities. He was recently inducted as a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners and hosts the Apple podcast “Cognitive Urbanism”.

*Part of the PlanTech seminar series. The start time for this event is 8am. Apologies for the early start but that's the only time we could get this speaker given the time zone.