Boston's partnership with Google is its latest AI experiment
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Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios
One of the oldest American cities is exploring how AI can make its neighborhoods work better, from reducing traffic to making public records easier to read.
Why it matters: Experimenting with AI can help employees find new shortcuts for doing business and make the city more prepared against cyber threats and other risks, says Santiago Garces, Boston's chief innovation officer.
Catch up quick: Boston announced Thursday a partnership with Project Green Light, Google's AI traffic analysis initiative.
- The team studies traffic patterns and makes recommendations for optimizing the traffic light plans in hopes of reducing delays and emissions, per the website.
- The project operates in 13 other cities worldwide, including Seattle.
How it works: The team uses AI and Google Maps driving trends to track traffic patterns at intersections around the city.
- They look for signs of movement, idling and starting and stopping.
- Engineers can cross reference the data with loop sensors, Garces says.
State of play: Google has analyzed the data for five months and started making recommendations.
- The city implemented those suggestions at intersections in Fenway, Mission Hill and Jamaica Plain this summer.
- Garces said there isn't an end date yet for the partnership, and they will continue assessing the data.
Between the lines: The Wu administration remains adamant about creating a city that runs on trains, buses, bicycles and pedestrians, but officials aren't under any illusions that people don't need to drive, Garces says.
- UPS vans, ambulances and buses carrying dozens of people need to use the roadways even in the best multimodal cities.
The city has undergone other AI experiments over the past year.
- One project involves creating summaries with keywords for City Council records dating back two decades.
- Garces says that's been a game changer for records that are not searchable by keyword and overall hard to read.
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