Artificial Intelligence

How Future City States Would Look Like with AI and Blockchain

The Philippines' foremost skyline with world-class skyscrapers. With potential for AI and blockchain.

AI and blockchain are two of the most talked about technologies right now. This is because of their potential to change the way we do things.

These technologies can even change how we build and design our cities. In the future, we can expect our cities to have more power and autonomy, so much so that they will become city states. These city states will be self-sufficient, including in ways that they secure their systems. With AI and blockchain powering the city states, a cyber attack would be more crippling, and more difficult to counter because city states are a whole lot bigger than any company we have now. Because of the large scale of these city states, they will be more prone to being targets of cyber attacks. It will be more difficult to defend and the payoffs are much greater.

What should you expect from these future city states?

  1. There would be less cars. City states of the future will disallow free vehicular access to the city centers. It will be able to monitor all traffic that are allowed into the streets. All vehicles will also be electric. There will be less human drivers delivering supplies. Privately used cars will be co-owned, much like a “car as a service” model. But most people would need to rely on a public transportation system that has minimal carbon footprint and no emissions.
  2. It will be greener. In the old times, factories polluted cities with their chimneys, so what governments did was to put these factories far away into the countryside. The result was that employees and workers had to travel far to get to work. Not only did we not solve the problem because we only moved it far away, we added to it with the number of emissions we get from all these cars and buses traveling from the city to the countryside. In the future, factories will be cleaner and they will be moved back into our cities. The supply chain will move underground. Goods will be delivered underground so there would be less need for surface roads. People would walk or bike, which not only makes the environment greener, but also makes us healthier.
  3. Crime prevention on steroids. Each city will have its own defense system, which will be able to move fast because there is less traffic. These defense systems will be able to coordinate in real time, with each component able to know what other components are doing. Human operators using computer voice and vision will be able to respond remotely. The city will also have the ability to remotely stop autonomous machines just in case these are hijacked for terrorist attacks.
  4. Everything will be connected. Right now, it seems that the only way for you to connect with the city is when you go to the town hall or when you get arrested. Not so in the cities of the future. Street signs will be smarter, it will see you and know who you are. Your private cars will be in constant communication with the city’s own monitoring platform. Your smartphone and other devices will also know your location. Your interaction with the city (when you need city services) will be personalized. The city will know who you are and what you need, and be able to deliver it. As such, cities are no longer just an authority, they become service providers.
  5. Corporation cities. Some cities will be owned by corporations or organizations, either by buying it or by creating new cities from scratch. More cities would be like gated communities of today, accessible only to residents and their guests. These corporation cities will be traded publicly with shares of stocks acting as currency. This is possible when you use blockchain to tokenize your shares. Every corporation city will compete with others to deliver the highest level of happiness, safety, and even surroundings to attract more shareholders.
  6. Intercity transport systems. With corporation cities becoming more prevalent, there would be a need for implementing better intercity transport systems. These systems will be funded by corporations, and will be faster than any transport systems we have today. It will also be autonomous, yet connected to other transport systems like airports, bus terminals, and trains.
  7. City banking will also be owned by corporations. Local banks within these corporation cities will finance the local economy. Using the city’s blockchain technology, these banks will be able to know if a person is creditworthy or not, reducing fraud and operational costs. There would be no tellers as banking services are delivered by artificial intelligence in self-service kiosks and branches. That means you have access to full range of banking services all day and night.
  8. Digital and connected healthcare services. Public healthcare systems will be automated and residents will be able to access services from their homes and even in other public areas. Healthcare professionals would be able to diagnose and treat patients remotely. Healthcare data will be centralized into huge data lakes, and they will be connected with other healthcare data systems used by other cities.
  9. Businesses and retailers will not just be taxpayers but stakeholders. Cities today earn from local businesses by way of the taxes they pay. In the future, corporations will make it so that their cities act more like a platform. They will require local businesses to invest in their cities, ensuring that these enterprises would add to the experience of its citizens. Some businesses might even be allowed to operate as a monopoly, but only after proving that they are able to deliver the best services and to uphold only the best standards.

* * *
While to some, these might sound like science fiction, it really is not. Some of the things described above are already happening; thanks to AI and blockchain technology. It is really just a matter of how fast our traditional cities would adopt these technologies, and that will usher in the age of the city states and eventually the corporation cities. It might start slow, with some cities opting to have a hybrid platform where part is owned by the public and the remaining is owned by corporations. The pace of change would also be affected by how good cities adopt security tools and policies to fight off cyber attacks.

Photo courtesy of Michael Gabriel L. Sumastre.

Uncategorized

Security Trends For 2024: SBOMs

A recent article on Forbes, linked below, lists five security trends that are likely to be important in 2024. Of course, AI-related security topics top...

Keep Reading

Uncategorized

Getting started with your first…

Anyone looking at writing their first Generative AI application should read this to save time. In June 2023, Google Cloud published a useful blog post,...

Keep Reading

Uncategorized

Read-Write and Read-Only query splitting…

Optimize the usage of the standby (secondary) read-only MySQL InnoDB Cluster servers by automatically and transparently distributing read-queries to them. A great feature in MySQL...

Keep Reading

Uncategorized

Considering Cloud Diversification?

Moving an enterprise to a Public Cloud can quickly feel like moving into a locked-in relationship with the Cloud vendor. One solution to diminish this...

Keep Reading

Uncategorized

Gartner: Global cloud consumption will…

Gartner forecasts that 2024 will see a 20% global cloud consumption increase from 2023 to $679B, while 2023 has seen an 18% increase from 2022...

Keep Reading

Uncategorized

ByteDance: Use AI for tuning…

ZDNet is reporting that a ByteDance (the maker of TikTok) Linux kernel developer has proposed to implement AI to tune the performance of Linux systems...

Keep Reading

AI Governance

What is AI TRiSM?

If reading now about AI TRiSM for the first time, it might be good read on and learn what it’s about because it leads the...

Keep Reading

Cloud Blog

4 Ways To Benefit from…

One of the benefits you get when you work with cloud applications is that you often have quarterly updates that are packed with features. This...

Keep Reading

Artificial Intelligence

Data and Analytics: Cross the…

  Artificial intelligence is a manna sent from digital heaven. That’s how blessed your business can get if you immerse into the AI of things....

Keep Reading

Business Intelligence Blog

How Brand Names Survive in…

  The age of digital marketplace has made it possible for unknown and smaller companies to compete with better-known and well-established brands. Take for example...

Keep Reading

Live Chat | Emergency