What's this about?
Sequoia's Training Data podcast interviews Nick Noone and Ben Rudolph of Peregrine, on making cities awesome.
Why is civic software an unusual AI market?
Because the buyer is a city, the procurement cycle is measured in years, the data is fragmented across departments that do not talk to each other, and the failure modes are political rather than commercial. It is close to the opposite of the developer-tools market where most AI companies operate. It is also where a large amount of unstructured public data sits — permits, incident reports, inspection records — that has never been usable, which is what makes it interesting now.
Why is it worth noticing?
no discussion thread
- One of only two podcast episodes in the window; Latent Space published nothing.
- Civic and government AI is under-covered relative to how much public money will move through it.
- Included for completeness of the record.