SJ Urban Impact: Generative AI Powered System for Participatory Civic Engagement Among Young Adults

Publication Date

1-1-2025

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Title

Communications in Computer and Information Science

Volume

2529 CCIS

DOI

10.1007/978-3-031-94171-9_27

First Page

285

Last Page

293

Abstract

The expansion of capabilities and rising levels of accessibility for AI, especially generative AI, paves the way for innovative solutions to everyday issues. Many young adults experience great difficulty in reaching local authorities to discuss challenges, staying involved in their communities, and having their voices heard. To address this lack of civic engagement in young adults, we created SJ Urban Impact, which is a generative-AI-powered web application to address common barriers and provide a convenient, easily-accessible method to encourage citizens to stay involved in their communities. Through 6 semi-structured interviews with young adult participants living around the Silicon Valley San Jose area, we found that many of them do not participate in their communities because it is difficult to learn about available opportunities and most people do not have the time to get involved. Meanwhile, having a convenient, accessible, and easy-to-navigate intelligent tool could raise motivation for young individuals to stay involved and actively participate in their communities. We discuss the features of the system as well as lessons learned from preliminary UX testing, limitations, and future work.

Funding Number

2142783

Funding Sponsor

National Science Foundation

Keywords

Civic engagement, Community involvement, Generative artificial intelligence, Image generation, Natural language processing, Text and image analysis, Urban development

Department

Information Systems and Technology

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