Will smart cities need AI to truly flourish?

Current smart city practices as trapping data from sensors in an isolated “landlocked lake.” But as sensors proliferate at blinding speed in global smart cities, the rivers of data being produced will turn into oceans. This will be complicated by the multiple digital platforms running simultaneously in each city.

It is predicted that around 1.6 billion connected devices will be hooked up to the larger smart city infrastructure by the end of this year. And as this rapidly expanding universe of devices ramps up the data flow, fears are mounting that smart cities won’t be able to handle the sheer volume of data flooding in.

Therefore, I believe artificial intelligence (AI) will be needed to break smart city data out of its silos.

Moreover, In order to effectively utilize all this data, I think smart cities need to develop the capability to analyze data horizontally, not just vertically. And the best way to tackle this complex data landscape is if operators fully embrace AI. As content of such data oceans will be massive and relevant analysis is very complex, I believe only artificial intelligence will be able to carry out the relevant data processing and forwarding with the necessary accuracy and speed.

Therefore, based on the two viewpoints above, I believe smart cities do need AI to truly flourish in the near future.