Helsinki, Amsterdam launch open AI registers

As the first cities in the world, Helsinki and Amsterdam launched open AI registers at the Next Generation Internet Summit on Monday, said the City of Helsinki in a press release.

The cities are aiming to be open and transparent about the use of algorithms and AI in the cities. The register is another effort to show where the cities are currently making use of AI and how the algorithms work.

“Helsinki aims to be the city in the world that best capitalises on digitalisation. Digitalisation is strongly associated with the utilisation of artificial intelligence. With the help of artificial intelligence, we can give people in the city better services available anywhere and at any time. In the front rank with the City of Amsterdam, we are proud to tell everyone openly what we use AI for,” said Helsinki Mayor Jan Vapaavuori.

“Algorithms play an increasingly important role in our lives. Together with the city of Helsinki, we are on a mission to create as much understanding about algorithms as possible and be transparent about the way we -as cities- use them. Today we take another important step with the launch of these algorithm registers,” said Deputy Mayor of Amsterdam Touria Meliani.

The cities of Helsinki and Amsterdam want to improve both the availability of services and the experiences of customers; and artificial intelligence can help in this.

For example, the cities’ chatbot experiments are a step towards enabling services to be reached anywhere and at any time. At the moment, a large number of AI experiments are underway in different sectors of the cities. The services, now ready and in use, have been compiled in one place in the brand new artificial intelligence registers in both cities. It’s a window to the AI systems that Helsinki and Amsterdam use.