Join the UN to discuss responsible geospatial and physical AI

Ever wanted to attend a small, focused event where the UN discusses how the latest technology will change life for most people on earth? You can. At the third UN Virtual Worlds Day on 11-12 May.

Ambassadors, ministers, city leaders, industry pioneers, and academic leaders are talking about turning AI, spatial intelligence, and the Citiverse into trusted, people-centred outcomes for cities and communities worldwide. And you can catch the discussion, in person or online, by registering here: UN Virtual Worlds Day.

What were once just visions and dreams about creating smarter cities have incrementally come to pass: the Internet of Things (IoT) is now embedded worldwide; geographic information systems (GIS) have gone through generational upgrades enabling immersive and interactive place-based experiences from anywhere; digital twins are being used in all sorts of urban situations; the early stages of autonomous systems – including humanoid robotics – are burgeoning, especially in Asia, with lots more to come.

A decade ago this kind of progress was simply inspiring, today, we’re growing a bit more cautious about how this technology will be used, who’s in charge, and its environmental impacts. Yes, we want to embrace the benefits of digital innovation. We also need to make sure it nurtures natural ecosystems, vulnerable citizens, and produces joy alongside public safety, security and efficiency.

The whole event in Geneva looks fascinating but one session in particular caught my eye: Spatial Intelligence for Decision-Making in the Citiverse: Encoding Space, Behaviour and Policy. The session’s description reads, ‘Spatial intelligence sits at the intersection of virtual worlds, AI, and the physical environment, enabling cities and institutions to integrate geospatial data, simulations, and AI-driven analytics to model real-world systems from urban planning and mobility to climate resilience and disaster response….’

In AI circles, this domain is increasingly coming under the banner of ‘world models’. Two pioneers of AI world models are Yann LeCun, and Fei-Fei Li. LeCun, formerly chief scientist at Meta Platform’s AI division, is now the founder of AMI Labs, which recently raised over $1bn to develop foundation models that enable AI to be governed by the world’s physical laws.

We live in a time of exponential change, surrounded by many uncertainties. Predicting when new innovations will scale is tough. However, more and more people are seeing the roadmap emerge

Fei-Fei Li, ‘godmother of AI’, co-founded World Labs focusing on spatial intelligence – creating 3D, persistent, and interactive worlds from 2D images or text. Computer vision (for example, CCTV) is a major source of training-data for this approach. These pioneers are taking AI beyond large language models (LLMs) which predict and produce words masterfully but cannot comprehend geospatial physical reality.

The laws of physics are completely separate to the laws of grammar. World model pioneers believe these physical laws can be encoded into AI foundation models, from which a world of geospatial innovation will spring. It’s worth thinking about timescales.

For us humans, it’s only in our mid-20s that our mastery of geospatial physical reality is fully mature. All of us start with a blank sheet and develop our parietal lobes (the sensing part of our brain, vision, smell, touch, hearing) to learn that it hurts when we fall down stairs, try to walk through a wall, or put our hand in a flame.

Protective parents intuitively know that their infants need monitoring, especially when toddler mobility takes off. By the time we are 12-years-old, our parietal lobes work well, but they are not fully mature until our mid-twenties – childhood, adolescence and young adulthood, sensing and physical development coupled in lockstep. For us humans, this 25-year development period is normal, but different animal species develop their sensing abilities over different periods of time.

Now, imagine that combinations of sensing and physical capability could be hardwired from inception, into manufactured mechanisms. Instead of taking 12 years to learn through trial and error, sensing was pre-installed, knowing the laws of physics from inception. Quite the head start – the Dojo scene from the film The Matrix (‘I know Kung-Fu’) comes to mind. Autonomous vehicles are one example we see emerging in cities. Lots more will come. Are we ready for it?

We live in a time of exponential change, surrounded by many uncertainties. Predicting when new innovations will scale is tough. However, more and more people are seeing the roadmap emerge. A discussion now about governance seems timely. Please do join the conversation at the UN’s 3^rd Virtual World’s Day on 11-12 May.