Examining the spatialities of artificial intelligence and robotics in transitions to more sustainable urban mobilities

Abstract

Robots now allow artificial forms of intelligence to be present in cities, generating unanticipated mobilities and new forms of urban life. In the article, the introduction of autonomous delivery robots in the English city of Milton Keynes provides a point of departure to interrogate how the spatial dynamics of sociotechnical transitions are inflected by the distributed cognition and non-human agency of artificial intelligence (AI) when deployed in urban contexts. A case study drawing on non-intrusive observations and documentary approaches follows robots in space, conceptualising urban robots as actuators of distributed non-human cognition whose operation and diffusion are subjected to complex spatialities. Thematic analysis is used to draw out topographical and topological features of the spatialities of AI, and the case shows robots are present in a territory (e.g. a city) but exceed territorial boundaries, thus requiring complementary spatial imaginaries to investigate their geographies. The authors conclude that the types of power at work in the implementation of AI and robots cannot be captured adequately by scalar relations and territorial units, and must be considered transversally in topological networks where reach matters. Consequently, topographical conceptions of fixed Cartesian space must be complemented by relational and topological spatial imaginaries of AI.