Responsibility and planning amid growing urban complexity and AI proliferation: many hands, many things, many tasks

Abstract This paper focuses on issues pertaining to the risks and responsibilities associated with growing complexity and the spread of AI technologies in the urban context. Arguing that such risks are often systemic, it analyses three structural responsibility problems, each linked to a distinct form of dispersion. The problem of many hands concerns the difficulty of attributing responsibility due to the dispersion of agency among the multiple actors involved in the design, deployment, and use of technological systems. The problem of many things concerns the dispersion of causality because technological risks in the urban context emerge from complex interactions among technical, social, and material factors. We then introduce a novel responsibility-related problem, the problem of many tasks , which concerns the dispersion of scope associated with the multiple tasks performed by general-purpose AI systems. Taken together, these forms of dispersion complicate the allocation of responsibility for urban AI risks and motivate the adoption of specific planning strategies. Such strategies require a systemic, participatory, and trajectory-based approach to planning that clarifies responsibilities, ensures meaningful human control over AI, and proactively addresses urban risks rather than merely reacting to isolated hazards.