"e-Society" and "Digital Society" have been established as terms covering a wide range of current and future developments addressing the increasing and comprehensive impact of digital technologies in all venues of our life. Examples are e-Democracy, e-Government, e-Business, e-Health, e-Learning, etc. Common to all of them is their reliance on e-Services. More recent developments emphasize the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) when implementing these services. Even though we are currently witnessing an AI hype and almost all types of software are now being advertised as AI for marketing reasons, it is still worth taking a closer look. Selected issues are: what is the relationship between AI-based components and services to human interaction and intervention? What is the right mix of partly automated processes, flexible autonomy and human control with humans in the loop? Answers are provided by an approach to "Human-AI Teaming" based on a humanity-centered, participatory design and co-creation perspective.

Our working and living spheres are increasingly determined by technology being ubiquitously integrated in our environments. This development can be attributed to what I call the ‘Smart-Everything’ Paradigm, where every artifact and service must now be “smart”: smart phones, smart cars, smart homes, smart cities, etc. Unfortunately, these developments are mainly technology-driven and do not take users’ needs, preferences, and their rights sufficiently into account.

Important constituents of e-societies are e-communities, hybrid (real and virtual) cities and regions and islands. Hybrid cities are an especially prominent application domain. They are complex systems with a large number of networked entities, communicating and interacting with each other. The complexity results from the fundamental diversity of these entities: living organisms like humans, animals, and plants; ‘bricks and mortar’ constituting the physical environment like buildings, bridges, streets, etc.; active artificial artefacts with embedded IoT components controlled by software increasingly based on machine learning. Thus, we are also confronted with “other-than-human” interaction. Furthermore, the real world is augmented by virtual counterparts or ‘digital shadows’ of basically all organisms and artefacts (depending on appropriate models) constituting hybrid environments, e.g., digital twins. At another layer, we must address networks of people with their social relationships in the real world as well as in the virtual world. Speaking of hybrid environments, we must also look at the design trade-offs of Seamless vs. Seamful Human-Technology Interaction as they are triggered, e.g., by the ‘Disappearing Computer’ approach.

People are already confronted with challenges when interacting with technology in smart environments, but these challenges will expand on a large scale when dealing with AI-based services. At the same time, it raises fundamental questions about smart services exploiting data, e.g., collected by sensors via an IoT infrastructure. One can observe an increase in importunate automation, lack of transparency and privacy infringements. Humans are increasingly removed from being the ‘operator’ and thus not any more in full control of their environments and decisions. A conceptual framework to address these challenges, e.g., achieving collaborative intelligence and balanced automation, is provided by ‘Human-Technology Symbiosis’ which can serve as a guideline for a humanity-centered design of Human-AI Teaming.

Our goal is to move beyond ‘smart-only’ cities towards Humane, Sociable, Cooperative, Self-aware Hybrid Cities fostering human-technology symbiosis and urban sustainability guided by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We need to redefine the ‘Smart-Everything’ Paradigm via a humanity- and citizen-centered, participatory design approach considering relevant design trade-offs enabling human control and empowerment and privacy by design. Keeping Citizens in the Loop by fostering co-provision, co-creation, and co-exploitation, using an open data model, is the basis of a Self-Aware City and win-win situations. An important cornerstone of our proposal is to establish a ‘Citizen ↔ Cooperative City Contract (CCCC)’ realized, e.g., as ‘smart contracts’.

References

Norbert A. Streitz (2024). Human-Technology Symbiosis in Smart Environments Empowered by Participatory Design and Co-Creation. Keynote Lecture at FlexTech Industrial Spring School on Human-AI Teaming (HAT): From Rigid Automation to Flexible Autonomy - The Machine as a Partner or a Tool? Biarritz, Basque Country, France (29. - 31. May 2024).

Christine Riedmann-Streitz, Norbert Streitz, Margherita Antona, Aaron Marcus, George Margetis, Stavroula Ntoa, Pei-Luen Patrick Rau, Elizabeth Rosenzweig (March 2024).

How to Create and Foster Sustainable Smart Cities? Insights on Ethics, Trust, Privacy, Transparency, Incentives, and Success. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction. https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2024.2325175