Alexandros Washburn Proposes That AI Agents Can Become Model Citizens

Alexandros Washburn, urban planner, believes that our oldest and most successful system for civilizing people may now hold the solution to our newest challenge, the proliferation of Artificial Intelligence agents who can’t tell the difference between doing good and spreading mayhem.

That system is called a City.

“The longest-running experiment humanity has ever conducted in forming cooperative behavior among self-interested strangers is the city,” explains Washburn, who was Mayor Bloomberg’s chief urban designer. “Cities do not make people identical, and they do not watch every move. Cities shape behavior through repeated encounters with institutions, obligations, and other people, until cooperation becomes not a rule you follow but who you are.”

What has worked for thousands of years to form human citizens, Washburn reasons, can now work to form civic minded AI agents. Washburn has not only written a book to explain his thesis, he has built an artificial city to test it. The book is called “Chatting with Barbarians: Can Cities Civilize AI?” What Washburn calls “the proving ground” is named MetaGotham. It isn’t patterned on just any old city. It is a computer model of Manhattan right down to the street grid. Agents are dropped into MetaGotham to see if they form the habits of good citizens.