When you think about AI being used in the local public entity environment, you probably think about your members themselves designing an AI tool. But some information ripe for AI enablement may already be within the public domain — which means anyone can engage it.
A recent article in the Vermont publication Seven Days — Questions About Your Town? Try This AI-Powered Chatbot — provides insight into the future of public information. The article describes a privately developed chatbot with access to minutes from 50 municipalities (and growing).
The chatbot provides details about key local government decisions and can compare findings from multiple municipalities. We questioned it about municipal budgets, available insurance coverage and related costs, municipal loss trends, lawsuits against municipalities, law enforcement liability issues, workplace injuries common for municipal workers, and health insurance benefits provided to municipal employees.
In short, it may not be the case that local public entities, themselves, are the ones to provide AI enabled access to public information. Consider the impacts of this kind of resource accessible for the meeting minutes from your members, including those for underwriting and risk management, marketing, member services and more.