On July 20, the Global Observatory of Urban Artificial Intelligence (GOUAI) and the Urban AI Atlas were presented at the Ca l’Alier headquarters. Both are initiatives of the Global Cities program of CIDOB and the Barcelona City Council promoted as from July 2021 by CIDOB together with the cities of Barcelona, ​​​​Amsterdam and London, in collaboration with UN-Habitat and within the framework of the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights. Its objectives: to monitor good practices and generate applied research on technological humanism and digital ethics that could be an inspiration for cities when designing public policies, and a reference when launching their AI projects, and help the ethical and democratic implementation of algorithms in cities.

Under the name of “Algorithmic democracy or democratise the algorithm”, the presentation session analyzed, from the humanistic and practical debate, how to rethink the integration of artificial intelligence in the urban environment and how to do it from civil society. The session was attended by Pol Morillas, director of CIDOB; Agustí Fernández de Losada, director of the CIDOB Global Cities program; Milou Jansen, coordinator of the the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights; Michael Donaldson, Commissioner for Digital Innovation, Electronic Administration and Good Governance of the Barcelona City Council; Theo Blackwell, Digital Director of the London City Council, and Lydia Prinsen, Program Manager, CTO Team of the Amsterdam City Council.  

In addition, the event offered a debate on algorithmic democracy between Daniel Innerarity, professor of Artificial Intelligence and Democracy at the European Institute of Florence, and Carina Lopes, director of the Digital Future Society Think Tank, Mobile World Capital Barcelona, ​​moderated by Carme Colomina, Research Fellow of CIDOB.