Latest / Technology Now / How agentic AI is powering smart cities and better public services | Robin Braun
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- ROBIN BRAUN What I love about their definition of success in working with them is being on that audacious innovation front curve, but also really providing benefit to their residents, to visitors, and it's continuous improvement. Is that making a citizen experience better? Is that making a visitor less frustrated with where to park? that doesn't sound like a big deal, but I know for me that can be. MICHAEL BIRD So Sam, you live in a city, don't you? do you ever think about what's going on behind the scenes in the city that you live in? SAM JARRELL all the time. I attend the virtual, meetings that they hold where you can, live stream what's going on when the city council meets. so yes, I absolutely do. What about you? MICHAEL BIRD Oh my goodness, Sam. You and I are, you and I are two peas in a pod sometimes. So I live in a little village, and we have what's called parish councils, and I can't help myself. I can't help but read the little parish minutes 'cause sometimes they're a bit juicy. And actually, on a wider scale, I sort of find it fascinating to understand how everything is connected, how everything works, all that sort of stuff. now, Sam, today we are gonna be diving into how AI can be used by local governments to streamline procedures, find and solve potential problems before they escalate, and improve experiences for both residents and visitors. I'm Michael Bird SAM JARRELL I'm Sam Jarrell MICHAEL BIRD And welcome to Technology Now from HPE. MICHAEL BIRD So Sam, if I say the phrase smart city to you, what sort of immediately pops into your head? SAM JARRELL Uh, usually AI-enabled cities, that use AI infrastructure to help automate daily operations, enhance public safety, improve citizen services, things like that. But I guess it's not just the technology itself, it's how you're actually using that data MICHAEL BIRD yeah, spot on. And the way that we use data has changed dramatically in the past decade AI and more specifically agentic AI has fundamentally changed how we are able to extract information from data, and it's started to be used in city planning. now, in the case of what we're gonna be hearing about in today's episode, the city of Vail in Colorado is using AI to completely reform how they are working to improve services for the residents and for the tens of thousands of visitors they have every year who come to Vail to ski or snowboard. I met with Robin Braun, VP AI Business Development Hybrid Cloud for HPE, to find out more about how Vail has integrated AI. But first, I wanted to know why an AI might approach a problem it needs to solve differently versus how a human would solve the same problem ROBIN BRAUN Well, I think one of the things that I find so interesting when we start talking, whether it's actually with partners or with customers, is that they don't necessarily know what they don't know about how they could solve something. AI is iterating so quickly what it comes down to is that we have looked at and solved so many efficiency problems, IT problems, business problems, the same way. We get a spreadsheet. we go and we pull data together into a really big spreadsheet, and then we sort the spreadsheet and try to make, it do really cool things. and AI takes so much of that away, but people are now having to change how they think about solving problems, and that the way they may initially think that, "Oh, I should," now can be completely changed. the paradigm is very, very different. However, it's changing so quickly that people don't know what they don't know that they could do. So when you ask and you go into a customer and you start talking about, "Well, what are your problems?" Or, "How would you like to solve something?" They don't know because they don't know that it's a problem because they don't know it could be done a different way MICHAEL BIRD And can you give some examples of that , ROBIN BRAUN so we actually had a fantastic example in, the town of Vail. We've worked with them on initial smart city implementation, and we were working with their housing department, and they have a lengthy collection of housing deeds with a lot of different restrictions and management and, 38 different points of interest that they need to be able to track. It's a very complicated data problem. It's a very messy data problem. There's handwriting on deeds. There's barcodes. There's all sorts of interesting things. and what was interesting is that when we first started talking to them, they wanted a better spreadsheet, and we were like, "No, you don't. You actually want agents to go and figure out your information and give you back answers to questions that you need to ask because you're going to create a spreadsheet of a bajillion different points of light. However, what is the actual question you're trying to solve today, and did you capture that bajillion and first point of light that you need to answer that question?" And so it was a really great conversation that they didn't know that we could solve their actual problem. They thought we could just give them a better way for them to manually solve their problem, and we actually automated the complete challenge so that they now are very much... They started perhaps maybe AI reticent to now really being AI first, but I think that was such a great difference of initial expectation to a working outcome MICHAEL BIRD and you used the phrase, smart cities, which it's a phrase that I think we talked a lot about, three or four years ago. I don't feel like we hear a lot about it nowadays, but When you say smart cities, what do we mean by that really? ROBIN BRAUN So with the rise of agentic AI, I wanted to take a revisit of what smart cities is. We've all seen the dystopian future of these large screens looking at everything happening in the city, and we associate that with smart city, and I use that in air quotes. and there's a fantastic amount of safety, security use cases, traffic use cases, all sorts of different capabilities you can drive with vision AI. However, what we've done differently in revisiting smart city, where it's two parts. One is that we leveraged a backend agentic platform, to be able to agentically start to connect data and processes together. Because one of my observations is that in working with cities, they tend to be very siloed, and that those silos actually prevent them from being as efficient as they would like to be, as their residents would like them to be, or as their visitors would like for them to be. And that by creating that agentic mesh, by being able to bring that intelligence to them, it starts to break down those data silos, which allows them to consider operating in a new way. But one of the other parts is that smart cities historically have been very custom, very, bespoke to that particular implementation, and we've really strived to create a platform where we can continue to iterate and bring in additional use cases, but maintain an integrated multi ISV software stack on top of private cloud AI that can then manage not only today, but in the future as more innovation comes. MICHAEL BIRD and you talk about siloed data within, town, cities, et cetera. that's how they've always operated. what is the advantage of, say, I don't know, the data from collecting bins and, uh, h- deeds of, of houses and birth certificates? Can you give some examples of maybe where surprising, there's been some surprising ROBIN BRAUN I think the most obvious example comes to emergency response. You have multiple entities, whether that be fire and police and emergency services, but you also think about in the wake of an emergency response, how many different groups and entities need to be coordinated together. How do you much more easily start to make those connections? And one of the things we also found is that sometimes it's just even the silo of the particular application. So when we created a fire detection, workflow Vail, we started with Vision AI, you can detect fire. But how do you now get that to the fire department with contextual information? It matters. Is the wind blowing at five miles per hour or 50 miles an hour? You may have a different response. Is there a hazmat signal or a sign shown on like an overturned tanker? You're going to show up with a different, response than if it is, something that's in a bin. So I think it's really looking at what is that disparate information that historically we haven't necessarily connected, even going so far as we're talking about can you show where the snowplow is going to be so that people can try to get their cars not, run over by the snowplow? it's so interesting. When you start to open that aperture of what could change if you shared information, it really starts to change the approach MICHAEL BIRD I'd love to dive, into the town of Vail a little bit more. pretend you're the tourist board. Tell me about the town of Vail. Where are they? What are the unique aspects of Vail? ROBIN BRAUN Uh, Vail is such a delightful town to work with. Absolutely wonderful people, amazing partnership, and such a beautiful area of the country. MICHAEL BIRD Where is it in the world? ROBIN BRAUN So they are in the mountains of Colorado, about, 12,000 feet above sea level, they're a very small town. They're known internationally for, skiing, for, being a mountain resort in the winter. but they have maybe 5,000 regular residents. But that flexes up during the winter season by 50,000 a day. So when I talk with their town manager, Russ, they have, big city challenges but in a small town footprint. And so it was very interesting in working with them because they're equally focused on their resident experience but also their visitor experience. Where do you park? how do you get to the ski lift, or how do you get to the restaurant? They have the, biggest free, bus system in the US. And so it's a really interesting and dynamic environment when you start to think about when you have such an influx of people, on a daily basis, how do you manage that with the resources in a very constrained area that is essentially on one side you have a high mountain that you can go barreling down at high rates of speed, to this small valley where Vail is nestled in beautifully, to this next peak over on the other side? MICHAEL BIRD Wow okay. And so, what's the big issues that they were facing? why did they come and have a conversation with you? ROBIN BRAUN what was most interesting, and I found that this is, in out talking with other customers, it doesn't necessarily matter if they're big or small, parking and finding parking when you go into, a municipal or metropolitan area is just silly regardless of where you are, or how difficult it is. And that's why we created actually a digital concierge that you can call or text and get parking information as you're on your way driving into Vail. One of the great things, because it's not so far from Denver, people will go up and day ski. Well, if you're coming in for the day, where do you go park that day so that you can easily go jump on the mountain and be out there as early as possible? So, some of those type of considerations are, you wouldn't necessarily think about for a 5,000-person town, but for a 55,000-person town on a daily basis, it starts to become real. MICHAEL BIRD And so talk to me through some of that. what did you do to solve some of those issues that they were facing in terms of technology, in terms of, practicalities? ROBIN BRAUN So I think one of the most interesting thing in working with the town of Vail has been their true focus, and which I love, on messy data, and that being able to help address their messy data issue actually frees them up to let their smart people do smart things, as Russ says. And being able to, uh, address things like their housing process, to go from taking weeks to look up whether you can build a deck or not to a few minutes. Completely different experience for the residents, but it now also frees up their people in the housing department to do outreach in the community, to be able to spend more time on affordable housing, to do things that they came there to do in housing. Nobody joins an organization to go look up deeds, but they do join the organization to work with residents and to work with builders and to really work with the town of Vail, which is so just incredibly exciting to see the difference. And so being able to address messy data challenge, to also look at how do they start to share how to get around Vail and communicate that, not just with a website, um, but where people really live, which at least I know for me and for most people I know, is on their phone MICHAEL BIRD what does success look like? ROBIN BRAUN What I love about their definition of success in working with them is being on that audacious innovation front curve, but also really providing benefit to their residents, to visitors, and it's continuous improvement. You know, there's not one aha moment. It's that continuous journey that we're now on together MICHAEL BIRD so final question then. what is AI, at least in this scenario? ROBIN BRAUN So to me, AI really in the end is a tool,or a collection of tools, to be fair. And what we've done, such as with the town of Vail, but certainly, with other customers as well, is what are the right tools that they need to be able to accelerate, drive efficiency, and to bring benefit to their organization, regardless of what that looks like. Is that making a citizen experience better? Is that making a visitor less frustrated with where to park? that doesn't sound like a big deal, but I know for me that can be. and in the end, when you fundamentally start to change how you approach a problem, now you can use new tools to come out with new outcomes MICHAEL BIRD Thank you so much for your time, it's been amazing to have you on Technology Now ROBIN BRAUN I so enjoyed it. Thank you so much SAM JARRELL so I think when people hear smart cities, they often imagine something a little bit more futuristic. What I really found interesting in this conversation is just, how practical a lot of the examples were of, the changes that were being made. things like parking or faster housing approvals, a little bit better emergency response. Just, the everyday experiences that can actually have a huge impact on how you feel about the place that you live or visit MICHAEL BIRD Yeah, this is sort of the, antithesis of technology for technology's sake, isn't it? We've had conversations where people have said, "Don't just put AI in for the sake of putting AI in. make sure it solves a problem." And I think one of the things that the, the lines that Robin said was like, "What is the question you're trying to solve?" And I think that's a really good approach to take, So I, really liked that approach, and I think you're right, it's quite refreshing to hear, AI being used in a way that feels, a bit more like actually it's just being thought of as a tool. SAM JARRELL Yeah, people have a lot of frustrations with AI's applications, rightly so, but I'm wondering if this is, if there's a learning here for a lot of organizations that where you'll see the biggest AI wins over the next several years as people come out of the fog of let's use AI for everything, is solving small frustrations at scale MICHAEL BIRD Yeah, a-and the line that she said at the end about, "Nobody joins an organization to go and look up deeds." SAM JARRELL Yeah MICHAEL BIRD And I thought, yeah, that again, that's it. if you can solve those problems, if you can automate looking up deeds so they can be used to, work with residents to, build affordable housing or, to do outreach in the community, great. that's such a good use of technology SAM JARRELL Yeah. And I thought she had the really refreshing definition of success, like viewing it not as one big breakthrough, but continuous improvements over time. And I think that really just reinforces that, AI adoption is really a journey, and it is these small wins that create trust with, your communities or your customers, and the benefits really do accumulate over time. I feel like sometimes, organizations put too much pressure on finding that one transformational AI use case rather than seeing where it's making all of these smaller improvements that really make a difference MICHAEL BIRD I think I would agree with you on that. one of the things I also found quite fascinating was just like the uniqueness of their problem. and it's maybe why AI works so well in the town of Vail, because They're a very small town In the summer, she said 5,000 residents. And then in the winter, it's 50,000 people a day. So you've got potentially 50,000 people who have no idea where parking is, no idea where the ski lifts are. And so you have this really unique problem of essentially booting up a city every morning, packing it down at night, and starting again the next day during the winter. it almost feels like the perfect use case for using technology to solve some of those problems. SAM JARRELL I agree. I agree. And I feel like, in terms of the main problem that she brought up, she spent quite a bit of time talking about silos, right? And I think that this is something that keeps coming up when people discuss AI. to me, it seems like a lot of the organizations don't really have, a data problem. They have a sort of connection problem of, connecting all of the different points from their messy data, since information lives in different systems and departments. And it struck me, like, a- asking the questions that you don't really know to even ask until you see some of these, these dots connected and are able to break down some of these silos and realize that you could solve certain problems that you never even thought of, right? Or, and make improvements that you hadn't even considered MICHAEL BIRD Yeah, totally. Now, Sam, obviously we all know that AI isn't going anywhere anytime soon. So one thing I wanted to finish on was by asking Robyn what advice she has for any organization which is considering AI into their systems. For example, what's the first thing that they should do? ROBIN BRAUN Get started. people can get in analysis paralysis where they're trying to find the best, the most perfect use case to get started with, and I suggest get started. Don't worry about how messy your data is, agentic AI can handle that. But also scope it in a way that you can manage it to get started. I love that people have these audacious goals of where they wanna go. That's a wonderful true north, but to get started, lean into a use case, a scenario that you can measure, that you can, execute, measure, show the benefit, and then continue to build on. the first thing you do isn't the last thing you'll do SAM JARRELL Okay that brings us to the end of Technology Now for this week. Thank you to our guest, Robin Braun And of course, to our listeners. Thank you so much for joining us. MICHAEL BIRD If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please do let us know – rate and review us wherever you listen to episodes and if you want to get in contact with us, send us an email to technology now AT hpe.com and don’t forget to subscribe so you can listen first every week. Technology Now is hosted by Sam Jarrell and myself, Michael Bird This episode was produced by Harry Lampert and Eva Higginbotham with production support from Alysha Kempson-Taylor, Nik Damarell, Beckie Bird, Alissa Mitry, and Jenessa Ayache. Our theme music was composed by Greg Hooper. SAM JARRELL Our social editorial team is Rebecca Wissinger, Judy-Anne Goldman and Jacqueline Green and our social media designers are Alejandra Garcia, and Ambar Maldonado. MICHAEL BIRD Technology Now is a Fresh Air Production for Hewlett Packard Enterprise. (and) we’ll see you next week. Cheers! SAM JARRELL Bye y’all