Google’s Jigsaw team was building a set of tools to harness the power of Google’s AI capabilities to help multiple stakeholders make sense of public input data. However, to utilize the tools for this use case, they needed an implementation that produced live data to build this use case. Innovation Engine worked with the Jigsaw team to imagine a pilot that would sufficiently inform the design and test the capabilities of this use case, supported Jigsaw’s research team and outside partners on gathering intelligence on target audiences, brought in the necessary infrastructure (including marketing and communications firms, media partners, and other support organizations) to bring a public engagement pilot to life, ran a small implementation to test Jigsaw’s capabilities, examined the impact these approaches could have on making sense of a large dataset, and then ran a much larger iteration with a large public campaign.

The result? What Could BG Be?, a large-scale test of using Google’s AI capabilities for more than 100 listening partners to make sense of public input. Tested in Innovation Engine’s home city—Bowling Green, KY—nearly 8,000 residents engaged more than 1 million times on community sourced ideas for the future of the region, as highlighted by Google’s team.

The project was named “the most interesting thing in tech” by the CEO of The Atlantic. Find more from MIT Technology Review, StateScoop, Bowling Green Daily News, and Fast Company.