By Sarah Wray – Artificial intelligence (AI) offers potential benefits for cities such as greater efficiency but there are also risks and new challenges, from procurement to governance.

Such complexity can result in ‘analysis paralysis’ and stalled progress, or expensive investments that don’t pay off. Helsinki in Finland opts to cut through this by learning more about the possibilities, limitations and requirements of AI through rapid experimentation, sourcing ideas from employees throughout the city and trying them out in three-month sprints.

‘Learning by doing’ through these experiments is an important part of finding out how new technology solutions work in practice, according to Ville Meloni, Programme Manager in the City of Helsinki’s Strategy Department.

“Our aim is not to move into production right away,” he says. “The key for us is to learn about the technology and from the experiment – for example, the pitfalls when procuring such services, understanding how to improve service processes, understanding how to improve data access and management, and so on.”

The Experimental Accelerator programme began in 2019 and was inspired by a similar model used by the national Finnish Broadcasting Company. Read On: