Jeremy Burke and Ramon Gras, Aretian’s co-founders, attended the first meeting of Urban AI, the first Think Tank focusing on AI for urban environments. The first objectives of the Urban AI Think Tank will be around creating a panel of experts, in AI and Urbanism that will allow free flows of ideas and exchanges of best practices related to cities, urbanism, and technologies. Each month, the advisors and contributors of Urban AI will gather and discuss possibilities and ideas on previously specified topics. All contributors will get to participate, present, and ask questions in turn to foster an exchange of ideas, solutions, and approaches.
The first meeting highlighted some of the first endeavors of the Urban AI Think Tank. The Invisible Cities Hackathon, taking place in France with the collaboration of 3 major French Design Schools, focuses on encouraging projects aiming at making urban progress more democratic and transparent and will conclude with an event in Paris in June 2021. Urban AI also created other points of collaborations with Algora Lab for a white paper called “AI and Social Contract”, as well as with the Singapore University of Technology and Design, and AI4Cities, a three-year EU-funded project bringing together leading European cities looking for artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to accelerate carbon neutrality. The Aretian team is eager to get to work with such motivated and driven people, and we are looking forward to exchanging on the topic of Urbanism and AI.