The Warwick-led AI in the street projectLink opens in a new window investigated how AI innovation manifests to everyday publics in five city streets across the UK and Australia.

Working together with artists, local government and community partners, research teams used participatory methods to create occasions for everyday publics - residents, citizens and passers-by - to encounter "AI" in city streets in Cambridge, Coventry, Edinburgh, London, and Logan (Australia).

Drawing on the insights and observations of AI in the street by community participants, the project found that AI is often designed to be invisible in the street, as AI-enabling technologies like camera's, sensors, drones and smart traffic lights operate beyond lines of sight and outside earshot.

This not only limits the opportunities for everyday publics to contribute to AI innovation in the street. It may also be in factor in the relatively low public trust in the ability of AI innovation to benefit communities and solve practical problems in the street.

However, once alerted to the presence of AI innovation in the street, community particpants had little difficulty imagining meaningful and benefial uses of AI in the street, from the use of traffic monitoring to manage traffic jams along busy commuter roads, and delivery drones to deliver essential supplies to the elderly.

As the UK government has recently announced a set of new initiatives to develop a digital vision for the country, not least a new Regulatory Innovation OfficeLink opens in a new window, a key question our project raises is how these emerging everyday understandings of AI in society can inform the development of this vision.