AI-driven assistive technologies are changing the way we experience and imagine public spaces

The integration of new applications with artificial intelligence (AI) and wearable devices makes users change the environment and how they interact with each other. The impact and scope of these new technologies is not yet fully understood.

The connection between technology and body is nothing new for many people with disabilities. Assisting technologies of tools and products designed to support people with disabilities have been involved in mitigating the built institutional barriers experienced by people with disabilities for decades.

Though not strictly considered support, immersive and wearable technologies can change the relationship between disabled users and their experiences.

For example, Ray-Ban Metagrass uses AI to explain what the camera is capturing using the Be My Eyes app. Using Openai’s large-scale language model, ChatGpt, this effectively transforms your user’s smartphone into a Vision Assistant.

Beyond wearables, some technologies are either more closely connected or integrated with the body. Examples include brain computer interfaces, AI-enabled prostheses, and bone anchor hearing aids.

The availability and production of environmental data from these technologies can affect how they relate to each other, how they move and understand space, and how they interact with the surrounding physical environment at any time.

We are at a critical time when AI-enabled technologies used by individuals can have a major impact on urban futures.

For example, what happens when a wearable “places” digital work or playplace? What does consumer-driven, AI-enabled digital intervention in urban space, largely private sector, mean for planning, zoning and taxation? What is the environmental cost of a global AI project?

And importantly, who can take part in this digital rethinking?

AI and the city

Access is challenging, but clothing items are often costly – potential ideas about the use of technology are also an issue for people with invisible blindness and/or hearing impairments and cultures. Some may simply assume that all blind and deaf people are universally hoping for biotechnical “miracles.”

There are other challenges too. The way technology captures or explains that data may not match the user’s existing sense of place. Furthermore, access to tech can have unintended consequences, such as erosion of face-to-face community buildings among people with disabilities.

Some kind of hearing loss affects around 1.5 billion people. I’m one of those people. I am a disability research scholar who wears behind the scenes hearing aids to enhance the hearing experience.

My hearing aids use AI and machine learning to sense and tune a healthy environment. They help me deal with the way my everyday places, such as my home or auditorium, are generally configured for people with no hearing loss.

With hearing aids, the city has never sounded so great, but sometimes it doesn’t get frustrated. The sound of birds is one thing. The crushing sound of a broken subway is completely different.

Cumulative exposure to noisy indoor and outdoor locations in the city poses hearing health risks, such as noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus, and can contribute to a wider health. I need to be aware of ongoing noise exposure and adjusting the amount of hearing aids will help me defeat the city when I want to.

Future body and city futures

Technology powered by AI can exacerbate the issues of access, privilege and freedom of movement. This occurs through who can purchase and use the device, as well as data and its applications. Data may be biased in terms of race, gender, sexuality, and disability.

Scientific research and media representations tend to emphasize the beneficial potential of techniques to “repair” bodies that are considered functionally medically deficient.

There is little to say about the disabled people who dominate the narrative, about the messy terrain of AI, machine learning and data governance, and the key roles in planning and designing future cities.

Digital Modeling

We also witness a growing interest in digital twinning, which creates highly accurate digital models for everything from the human mind to the entire city.

Twin motivations, whether rendered on body or city scale, appear to be focused on planning and performance optimization, or exploring perfection. Like other models, it deals with abstractions from reality. City twins seem unable to capture many of the fine grain environmental barriers experienced by people with disabilities.

Ownership Restrictions

Not everyone wants to technically “support” or be augmented or reinforced. There are medical, identity and culture, affordability, legal, moral and ethical concerns.

Other issues raised by the Brain-Computer Interface research, for example, include concerns about legal capabilities and ownership, including ownership of data generated on the device.

In a study on the impact of neurological technology, researchers shared legal implications related to two disabled people who were displaced from voting in Spain. Those who restored the ability to communicate autonomously using their fingers and computers restored their rights, but the other who used human intermediaries did not.

Legal issues arise as to how liability is assigned if an augmented body is injured or injured by another person.

Where does that person end and does technology begin? Who will decide?

Future technology

As AI and assistive technology use increases in everyday urban living, these questions need to be addressed faster than they do.

And if people with disabilities are not properly involved in these discussions and decisions, cities are not accessible, and less.

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