A new global study ranks New York and Washington, D.C. as the “most intelligent” cities in America for their use of digital technology and artificial intelligence (AI).
61 of the world’s largest cities in 39 countries were evaluated for how they use artificial intelligence and other digital technologies to serve residents and businesses. They received scores in 35 quantitative and qualitative indicators across five categories: outcomes, strategy, adoption, methods of operation, and enablers. The researchers then divided them into four stages of maturity: developing, emerging, accelerating, and leading. Boston Consulting Group then published the results in the first edition of their Intelligent Cities Index.
“The five leading cities are London, Dubai, New York City, Washington, and Amsterdam,” the report explained. “All five show leading maturity across two or more of the five domains. However, no one city leads every domain; even cities at the cutting edge of technology implementation have areas to strengthen.”
Other American cities analyzed include San Francisco (7th overall), Boston (15th), Los Angeles (16th), Austin (22nd), Dallas (24th), and Chicago (27th).
Enthusiasm and optimism about AI isn’t universal
The study also found a strong correlation between residents’ optimistic perceptions of AI’s future role and their frequency of Generative AI use. According to San Francisco State University, Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) refers to a type of artificial intelligence that can create new content, such as text, images, audio or video, by learning patterns from large sets of sample material.
“Positive sentiment toward AI provides a key element — confidence in the technology’s future place in the world — that can shape how the intelligent city evolves,” the report claims. “Our research found a powerful link between how frequently residents use GenAI tools and how positively they view AI’s role in their future.”
The study broke the cities into four categories with this in mind: AI enthusiasts, pragmatic power users, cautious adopters, and reserved adopters.
Only one of the American cities fell into the AI enthusiast category (Austin), and only San Francisco was classified as having pragmatic power users among its residents. Residents of New York City, Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago, and Dallas were all classified as cautious adopters.
“Cities whose residents use smart city apps more frequently also tend to score higher on satisfaction,” the study explained. “This includes London and Dubai, leaders in the Index and high scorers in app user satisfaction. Resident satisfaction with smart city apps is quite low in cities where the frequency of usage is lower than average.”
Other cities ranked in the top 10 overall in the Intelligent Cities Index were Berlin, Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul, and Singapore.