ROBOTS IN AI URBANISM

This chapter reflects on how robots materialize the AI algorithmic networks and logics that are permeating our cities. It also considers the everyday compromises, glitches and frictions that may occur as this shift takes hold – or how robots can reveal the roles and presence of AI-driven technologies in the ways that everyday life emerges. It treats robots as physical machines animated by computational processes that can sense and act apparently autonomously in their physical and material surroundings. The discussion is built around two key concepts: atmospheres and emergence, and the chapter then outlines a framework of robotic contexts, relationalities and messiness to explain how robots can foreground the contingency of automated processes. In doing so, it advocates for a way of thinking about AI as exceeding what its designers or programmers intend and instead locating it in urban contexts that are contingent, unpredictable, complex and dynamic.