As the world urbanizes, smart cities with AI-driven solutions promise to tackle urban challenges, including environmental sustainability. Yet, ethical concerns emerge, balancing environmental benefits with privacy, equity, and transparency. AI's data collection for resource management raises privacy issues, necessitating a balance between data efficiency and individual rights. Ensuring equitable distribution of smart city benefits is crucial to avoid deepening social inequalities. Transparency and accountability in AI decision-making are essential to build trust. AI's optimization should consider environmental ethics to preserve long-term ecological well-being. A human-centric approach must be upheld, safeguarding human agency and autonomy. Ethical considerations are vital in realizing the potential of AI for sustainable, inclusive, and environmentally responsible smart cities. Policymakers, urban planners, and technology developers must collaborate to address these ethical challenges for a harmonious future.
Top1. Introduction
The idea of “smart cities” has developed as a viable response to the problems of rapid urban expansion, resource depletion, and environmental degradation as urbanisation continues to accelerate (Ahmad et al., 2020). Intelligent cities make use of cutting-edge technologies, especially artificial intelligence (AI), to improve many facets of urban life, such as public services, energy use, waste management, and transportation (Javed et al., 2023a). Smart cities provide a wide range of potential advantages, including higher efficiency, decreased carbon emissions, improved quality of life, and greater public engagement (Yigitcanlar et al., 2020). However, the incorporation of AI into urban infrastructure raises important moral questions about the sustainability of the environment and personal privacy. Designing urban systems to suit present demands without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs is the idea of sustainability in the context of smart cities (Sharifi et al., 2021). Smart cities may improve waste management procedures, cut energy consumption, and optimise resource use by utilising AI-driven data analytics and predictive modelling. Intelligent transport systems, for instance, can improve traffic flow, lowering congestion and pollution. Building energy use may be optimised using AI-enabled energy management systems, lowering carbon footprints (Javed et al., 2023b). The environmental impact of garbage disposal can also be reduced by using intelligent waste management systems to optimise waste pickup routes (Basheer, Walia, Mehraj, et al., 2023). These developments could lead to more environmentally friendly cities, supporting international efforts to battle climate change and preserve natural resources (Basheer, Walia, Farooq, et al., 2023).
Smart cities' efforts to be environmentally sustainable may, however, have unforeseen repercussions that make moral quandaries worse (Elhoseny et al., 2021). Due to the increasing reliance on energy-intensive AI infrastructures, one important worry is the possibility for increased energy consumption and waste generation. Data centres that enable applications for smart cities use a lot of energy because AI algorithms need a lot of computing power (Camaréna, 2021). A rise in electronic waste may also result from the continuous generation and processing of data in smart cities. To prevent sustaining the environmental issues that AI technologies seek to address, it is essential to strike a balance between accomplishing sustainability goals and reducing the ecological impact of these technologies. The ethical aspect of privacy in AI-enabled smart cities is equally significant . The ubiquity of networked sensors, cameras, and data networks makes it possible for smart cities to gather a huge amount of information about the daily lives of their residents. Smart cities regularly collect personal information about residents, creating questions about data privacy and surveillance. This information ranges from mobility patterns and energy consumption habits to social contacts and health-related data. These data have the potential to cause privacy violations, discrimination, and the degradation of people's rights to anonymity and autonomy if managed improperly or utilised inappropriately (Bjørlo et al., 2021).
The possibility of algorithmic biases arises as AI systems process data to make data-driven judgements in real-time (Prawiyogi et al., 2022). Because algorithms reinforce and amplify prejudices found in training data, these biases can provide unfair results and worsen already-existing societal inequities (Mylonas et al., 2021). For instance, judgements made by AI to allocate resources may unintentionally Favour some demographic groups, resulting in uneven access to resources and services. For the designers and decision-makers of smart cities, addressing bias in AI systems and guaranteeing equitable outcomes present substantial problems (Kaginalkar et al., 2021). In AI-enabled smart cities, balancing environmental sustainability and privacy demands resolving difficult ethical conundrums. Establishing thorough regulatory frameworks that protect individual privacy while fostering openness and responsibility in the application of AI technologies is crucial (Vinuesa et al., 2020). It is crucial to strike a balance between the collecting of data for urban optimisation and the privacy rights of residents. Citizens should be able to express informed permission, have a role in how their data is collected, and be aware of how it will be used.