Iaqos

IAQOS – OPEN SOURCE NEIGHBORHOOD ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Iaqos is the acronym of Intelligenza Artificiale di Quartiere Open Surce – Open Source Neighborhood Artificial Intelligence.The project uses art and design to turn data into knowledge that can help to understand and solve problems within a specific local context and its community.

THE PILOT PROJECT

The place where IAQOS was born and where its first experimentation took place is Torpignattara, a neighborhood in the periphery of Rome, on the edge of downtown, known as the most multicultural district in the city.

In its first manifestation in Torpignattara IAQOS took the form of an artificial kid, designed to build empathetic relationships with people from the local community and to involve them in a participatory action aimed at urban regeneration.

The young artificial intelligence has lived both online and offline, on social networks and through interactive art installations that allowed it to physically interact with the local people.

The first issue IAQOS addressed was the quality of Torpignattara’s relational ecosystem, analysing how different cultures met, interacted and lived together. 

The AI collected and investigated data and then gave them back to the community, taking advantage of a series of strategies – inclusive workshops, events, art installations, visualizations – to help people understand and use data in innovative ways.  

 The project was structured on different levels: 

• the implementation of an open source AI dedicated specifically to neighborhoods that can be used again and brought to other cities on different issues;
• a intervention aimed at digital inclusion in which art and design serve as strategic means to significantly improve technology accessibility and usability;
• the acquisition of skills about AI and its problematic implications (e.g. about ethics, privacy, algorithmic biases);
• AI experimentation to realise new active participation models and knowledge representation patterns that are more human and empathic.

Watch the project video: https://youtu.be/I7ovq5E66f8

Explore IAQOS’ brain: www.iaqos.online

IAQOS is the winning project of “periferiA Intelligente” (Intelligent Peripheries), a call launched by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Art and Architecture and Urban Peripheries (DGAAP) to promote initiatives able to combine creativity and innovation as a tool for urban regeneration.