How an army of digital sleuths are using AI to fix America’s crumbling sidewalks

I’m on a tree-lined street in Lincoln Park, a city in Metro Detroit, studying a curb ramp—the part of the sidewalk that slopes down to meet the street at an intersection so that someone using a wheelchair can safely cross. I mark the ramp “good” and move on. Psych! I’m not in Lincoln Park. I’m labeling and rating sidewalks from the comfort of my own couch in Los Angeles using Project Sidewalk, an online crowdsourcing platform dedicated to improving sidewalk accessibility. Part immersive video…