The city of South Bend is a finalist for a $1 million grant to use AI to address problems before residents complain about them.
Bloomberg Philanthropies Wednesday announced South Bend is one of 50 cities around the world, and one of just seven in the U.S., selected as finalists in its 2025 Mayors Challenge. It’s a competition to spur local government innovation that bolsters essential city services and improves lives for residents.
The city has proposed transforming its 311 system, where residents request information or report problems, from reactive to proactive. They’d do that by using AI to anticipate residents’ needs and preemptively connect them with city services.
Denise Riedl is the city’s chief innovation officer. She says the city will train the AI with data from 12 years of 311 calls.
"Now that we have the data we can analyze it and use our history," Riedl says. "We can anticipate the problems, proactively reach out to the residents, and either tell them that they've already been solved or work with them to solve them."
Bloomberg will give the finalists $50,000 toward developing a prototype this summer and fall. They’ll decide in January which 25 cities will win $1 million to help implement their ideas.
