Building the Al-Powered City: Suma Nallapati on Public Service, Smart Cities, and the Future of Government

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Artificial intelligence is transforming every industry—but what happens when it transforms an entire city?

In this episode of Signal & Noise, hosts Rio Longacre and Brett House sit down with Suma Nallapati, Chief AI & Information Officer for the City and County of Denver, to explore one of the most important—and often overlooked—applications of AI: improving the lives of citizens.

Rio and Suma first met during Mayor Mike Johnston's transition team, and this conversation brings together years of shared interest in technology, public service, and civic innovation. Rather than focusing on AI's impact on marketing or enterprise productivity, this discussion asks a bigger question:

How can AI make society better?

Suma shares how Denver has become one of America's leading AI-enabled cities, why she left the private sector to return to public service, and how city governments can embrace AI responsibly while maintaining public trust. From AI-powered citizen services and smart cities to responsible governance and the future of work, this is a thoughtful conversation about technology's role in creating stronger communities—not just more efficient businesses. 

We also discuss:

• Why Suma left the private sector for public service—and how Denver became one of the first U.S. cities to appoint a Chief AI Officer

• The story behind Sunny, Denver's multilingual AI assistant, and how AI is improving citizen services while keeping humans in the loop

• Responsible AI, governance, public trust, and balancing innovation with privacy

• What "smart cities" really mean, plus lessons government and the private sector can learn from each other

• Why AI adoption is becoming more about organizational change than technology itself, including the future of work, regulation, and public policy

• Why curiosity—not fear—is the leadership trait that will define the AI era, and Suma's vision for a more compassionate, AI-enabled society

  
  

Whether you're a CIO, public sector leader, technologist, policymaker, entrepreneur, or simply curious about how AI will shape everyday life, this episode offers a refreshing perspective on technology's highest purpose: serving people.

Watch the full episode and join the conversation.

🔑 What We Cover💡 Key Takeaways🎯 Why This Episode Matters Read the full transcript below.

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Brett House (00:02.123)

Hey everybody, it's Brett House at Signal and Noise. I'm joined by my co-host Rio Longre. today's guest is Suma Nalapati, the chief AI and chief information officer of the city of Denver, which is very, very cool. And we're very excited to have you, Suma on the show. Yeah, and we're and we're bringing more people outside of sort of our industry of focus, AI and tech and marketing, to to really add flavor and color.

Rio (00:18.956)

We've been waiting for this one for a long time, that's for sure.

Brett House (00:32.021)

To some pretty complex topics and AI transformation as it applies to the public sphere, the corporate sphere is is a pretty important topic and and something that I think our our audience is is very interested in hearing about. So, Suma, you spent your career leading digital transformation across both public and private sectors. You're at you're at the Colorado State government under govern Governor John Hickenlooper.

Rio (00:56.524)

Hicken Looper, yep.

Brett House (00:57.143)

his administration. I was like, I I should have asked about that pronunciation beforehand, before moving to executive leadership roles in Dish. a company called Evanbridge, Insights, where you've served chief digital and chief information officer roles. So you're clearly very technical. you're an executive advisor for the chief digital officer executive program at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management. Certainly a business school that I wanted to get into. I don't think I did.

I went to Boston University. Not nothing to to you know, it's also a good school. but you know, so you're gonna bring a lot of of really good sort of intel just for our audience around public service and and what you're doing for the state of for the city of Denver, which has become one of the country's leading AI enabled cities, right? So we'll be discussing, you know, why you chose public service, how AI is changing government, which is a fascinating topic.

what what the smart city of the future looks like and how technology may become one of the most important tools of improving everyday citizens' lives. So Suma, welcome to Signal and Noise.

Rio (01:51.424)

yeah.

Suma (02:01.871)

Thank you, and thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited for this conversation.

Brett House (02:06.097)

Yeah. And tell us a tell but did I miss anything in your background? Tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of what brought you to your current role.

Suma (02:14.185)

yeah, I've been in the technology industry for more than thirty years and it's been a very gratifying, fulfilling journey for me. My background actually was in nuclear physics with a specialization in radiation physics and isotope technology. There were not many jobs back in the day in that field in Colorado, so I was like, you know, I don't want to just sit around. So I said let me take up a career in technology and this was the early nineties where if you could s spell IT you could get a job.

Brett House (02:42.475)

The the birth of the internet, right?

Suma (02:42.905)

and I was grateful. The birth of the internet and this was the Y2K and all of that, right? So I was like, this is very interesting and my bachelor's actually is in electronics and computer science. So that was very helpful. so thirty years I grew as a programmer. I'm I think always in in my heart I'm a programmer. I love programming, getting to solutions. the programming nowadays is so, so different.

Brett House (02:49.609)

Hmm.

Suma (03:11.641)

with AI. We'll come to that. but programmer to technically to a manager to a director to a vice president to the CTO for the state of Colorado to the CIO for the state of Colorado did a great stint in public sector. I really enjoyed my time at the state because the impact of technology on the most vulnerable populations was extremely great and went back to the private sector actually I started at Echostar

Brett House (03:12.543)

Yeah, yeah.

Suma (03:41.379)

as a programmer and I went back as the chief digital officer several years back. So sever so it was such a full circle moment. And then to Everbridge Insight Enterprises and I was like this is great. but I met Mayor Mike Johnston at an event and his passion for public service was so great to see Denver was going through a quite a bit of issues with homelessness. The COVID

Brett House (03:49.503)

Yeah.

Suma (04:11.223)

impacts were quite intense and I was like, this is not the Denver Item members so I wanted to give back to the community. I met Rio during that process and it was absolutely you know, such great community leaders coming together. So I really love my job at the city and county of Denver.

Brett House (04:29.451)

That's awesome.

Rio (04:29.784)

Well, Suma, we are thrilled to have you on here. there's a couple full circles in your career, right? So you went you went, you know, from public sector working with Hick and Looper back into private sector. You had some really high profile roles. Then when I think when we met, you were doing you were still in the private private sector. You were I think CIO had a digital at a professional services firm. And then then in you we worked together in Johnson's transition team. Me too. And Mike's just such a great he's such a great leader. It was it was fun working with him and and seeing that. Yeah.

Suma (04:55.641)

He's an amazing human being too.

Rio (04:58.796)

And it's it's been cool to see you get the role of the really head of digital and now you know the chief AI officer for the city of Denver. There's a bunch of reasons why, besides I just thought it'd be fun to have you on here, have a super smart person. But I think there's some really interesting trends and that make this conversation very relevant to what's happening today. Everyone's always asking, like, how will AI make business faster, right? How will it improve things? How will it improve productivity? But no one's really asking, or very few people are asking, how will it make our lives better?

Right? How will it make cities run better? So I I see your mission as being something a little different, right? You're looking about how to use AI to improve s services for citizens, right? To help steward taxpayer dollars make them more efficient, to solve the biggest, most pressing, most challenging public problems while maintaining public trust. It's it's a completely different and I think really amazing and diff a difficult challenge you're faced with. So looking at your own journey, the the the career you've built.

Suma (05:28.637)

my god

Rio (05:57.859)

And they're brought you to here, it must have been a big financial trade-off, right? Like because you priv I mean public sector, I'm sure it's more rewarding in certain ways, but I mean, going from a C-suite role in private sector must have been a big must have had a big impact financially on on your career, I'm imagining. Is that s is that safe to say? So with that, what your what drew you what drew you what what drew you back, right?

Suma (06:18.441)

Yeah, I do miss the perks. Yeah, I do miss the perks of the private sector, you know, being able to go to like special events in the private private sector when you're meeting clients and stuff. I was at the Masters game, I went to the Super Bowl, so it was all like amazing, right? But I don't think we can ever put a price on the gratification you receive from your career having an impact on people. That's the biggest biggest

success, right, in my opinion. And I keep coming back to the public sector for that reason. yes, the private sector is great, it it can come with a lot of innovation, but I also see the public sector actually can leapfrog even o over some private sector organizations because there's this sense of urgency to help people. Right. So I I don't think

Brett House (07:06.793)

Yeah. Well, I'm glad I'm glad one of us is doing something good for the general public good. no, it's it's real it's really fascinating to to see that you said, hey, I've got these skills and I can apply them. And I I think it's important to understand or the audience understand that AI and city government's not abstract, right? It actually has real world applications from from efficiency gains. There's obviously tight budget constraints in terms of

Suma (07:12.547)

Yeah.

Rio (07:13.571)

Yeah.

Suma (07:26.053)

It's not.

Brett House (07:33.333)

how many people you can hire or or maybe in some cases you have to downsize teams. What are you how are you implementing your knowledge as a programmer and an AI leader and a data leader to really help the the government function better and better serve people?

Suma (07:49.113)

Yep, I think our AI journey, I have to give this context. three years back when we took on the when I took on this public sector role with Mayor Mike Johnston, one of the things I talked about is you know, this was right as Gen AI was becoming a buzzword and was like what you know, this was open AI and all of that conversation was happening. And I told the mayor

There's so much that can be achieved with AI. are you willing to experiment? Are you willing to consider, you know, the possibilities? And he was like spot on, right? And he's like, let's do it. And we we not only just experimented with it, we brought thought leaders to the city and county of Denver, which was Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, Eric Schmidt, the former C of Google. These are the leaders, trail bait blazers with AI. And they came and to Denver with then AI Summit and said, you know.

Brett House (08:33.503)

Uh-huh.

Suma (08:43.885)

There's the frontier labs in AI that are actually causing clinical trials to go faster and helping with the possibility of a cure for cancer like in our timeline, in our generation. And that was exciting. That was like wow, coming from leaders like that, with such heavy technical backgrounds and saying that there's possibilities to have human impact, that was quite, quite interesting. So we got two leaders right off the bat, and Phaedrellis Lamkins, who's actually Prince

the musician Princess Handler, she has her own billion dollar AI company. She talked about the possibilities and the impacts on aging and all of the things that are real issues that are very important for humankind, not just public or private sector.

Rio (09:28.014)

Yeah. Yeah, so for the for the listeners, the the summit SUNA was referring to as the Den AI Summit. And I believe that's happened two years so far, right? This would be the third year coming up. Yeah, yes, a D E N, so Den AI, right. So it's actually the Den AI Summit. And this was what SUMA launched with with with Mayor Mike Johnson with with Reed Hoffman and some others backing it. I mean, I went last year, it was super cool because what I thought was different about it, SUMA, is we're really discussing how AI can be used to improve public services.

Suma (09:35.269)

Two years

Brett House (09:36.406)

it's the d the den AI, not gen AI. Play on the word Yeah, yeah.

Suma (09:39.427)

Yeah. It's first one penny. Yeah.

Yeah.

Rio (09:55.511)

improve people's lives. It was a very different discussion than we're having, certainly in advertising about how we can like boost yield for publishers or like increase and imp improve targeting, right, for advertisers. Very different discussion. I thought it was very interesting.

Suma (10:09.057)

And last year we actually had a Buddhist monk who's an ethicist at the MIT school of ethics, right? And he talked about the responsible use of AI. So we're balancing the leaders, thought leaders like Reedhoff and Eric Schmidt with with a Buddhist monk, right? We're taking Yeah.

Brett House (10:25.407)

Yeah, and that and that seems to be a pretty common trend right now is the the that I I think there's job descriptions for either philosophers or ethnicists, right? And to bring sort of principled human you know morality, et cetera, into this sphere to basically it it's kind of a governance layer, if you think about it. It's a way to to set governance, a different type of governance than just sort of typical

Suma (10:44.281)

Yeah, the government layer. Yeah.

Rio (10:47.628)

Well, it's well it's changing the way we work, it's changing the way we interact with each other, certainly changing the way we interact we use technology and it's allowing people who are who are maybe non technical, don't have your technical background to do certain things like may like even basic creating code vibe coding that he couldn't have done before. So yeah, it does it does it does bring some philosophical

Suma (11:04.249)

Yeah, again, I mentioned that I'm as a programmer, right? The tools that I had 30 years back to now, it's it's a whole world of difference, right? The tools that programmers now have, whether it's the GitHub, GitLab, AI capabilities, white poding, it's actually giving us so much more potential in terms of coming to solutions faster than we could even imagine, like even 10 years ago, 15 years ago.

Brett House (11:24.928)

Yeah.

Brett House (11:28.489)

Yeah, I mean the ability to test and prototype multiple multiple decisions or or use cases that you're solving for just at a at a volume that you couldn't do before. So that you're just more likely to, I think, arrive at the right answer because you've you've sort of tested and experimented, right, in ways that took long product life cycles in the past. And now it's like instantaneous. So Denver, Denver was one of the first cities, if I'm not mistaken, that that actually hired a chief AI officer role. Like, what is your

Suma (11:55.941)

So they expanded my role. They expanded my role because again, we we didn't want AI to be done to us. We wanted to be part of the conversation, lead the conversation with AI, how AI is going to integrate in a very responsible way into our technology roadmap so that we control how it's done. We don't want the tech bros to do it to us. We want to done yeah.

Brett House (11:58.461)

Okay.

Brett House (12:03.423)

Yeah.

Brett House (12:15.177)

Yeah. So Yeah, no, hey yeah. Take ta yeah, take the take the the bull by the horn, so to speak. And what and what is your day to day, what is your technology roadmap and your day to day kind of look like within within the government?

Suma (12:30.085)

So there's a lot, we actually have created award-winning solutions with AI already. The way I think about AI is transformational work for humans, transactional work for bots. When you think about a typical city worker, they come here because they want to make an impact. They can go find jobs somewhere else, especially I'm talking about technology kind of roles or like anything with with.

Brett House (12:45.803)

Yeah.

Suma (12:58.511)

Which requires innovation. They come here because they want to make an impact. They can go make hundreds of thousands of dollars outside, but they're here for the purpose. They're here for the mission. And I found some brilliant, brilliant coworkers through my journey in the public sector. And when they are bogged down by the re repetitive mundane tasks, they lose the spirit of why they joined the public sector. So if you're able to give them tools to help with their day-to-day, mundane tasks, they can focus on the higher value add.

Brett House (13:20.576)

Yeah.

Suma (13:27.375)

The reason why they join, the heart of public sector and that gives them a great level of gratification. So thanks for much.

Brett House (13:30.431)

Yeah. They lose they lose they lose the forest when they're in the trees, right? And

Rio (13:32.847)

Yeah, I Yeah. Well I really like that point. Suma, I was talking to my wife about like my work the other day, and I remember telling her that I'm having the most fun I've had at work in a long time. She said, Why? You're working so much. I said, You know what? I'm focusing on the things I really like doing. The Monday tasks, AI is taking care of a lot of those, whether it's writing long emails or transcribing things or taking copious notes. AI does those, it does those better and faster than I ever could have.

Suma (13:35.523)

Yeah. Yeah.

Rio (14:00.844)

And I'm focusing on things that are like that. I think that's a great point. But looking at like how the city operates, like how is AI like, have you seen it start to impact even beyond the jobs themselves? How the city functions? I love your thoughts on that.

Suma (14:14.553)

Yep, absolutely. We three years back deployed Sunny, our platform. Yeah. the platform that sits on top of our Denver Gub website, right? It's available twenty four by seven. It's available in seventy two different languages. So just imagine.

Brett House (14:20.443)

I was just gonna ask about that.

Brett House (14:31.475)

And it's a it's a twenty s it's a twenty four seven it's an AI chat bob powered by the city of

Suma (14:34.957)

Yeah. And if I have to like, you know, hire so many people with all those different language requirements and and twenty four by seven, I simply do not have the budget for it. And what Sunny is doing is augmenting our very resource constrained three one one team and it's helping answer so like you know, is the Rec Center open? Is the food shelter open? Right? Those kinds of things instantaneously, any time of the day. They don't need to wait for nine AM or eight AM to get that question answered. So

Brett House (15:04.043)

Yeah.

Suma (15:04.345)

And it's also integrated to our back-end systems like Salesforce through our middleware MuleSoft technology, right? So it's a very robust platform. It's not just a thing on the top, it's truly an integrated platform. So we are saying 30% of our 311 calls be answered by Sunny rather than go through a human and we all actually have human and loop. The training is robust. We've been training these models for quite some time. So it's been quite interesting to see the efficiencies within our

Yes. Yep. Absolutely.

Rio (15:34.358)

Is it thirty percent already being handled by Sunny Suma? Okay, that's impressive.

Brett House (15:37.728)

Yeah. And and w behind this project, just to kind of open up the the the hood of this engine that you've built, like how hard or easy was the actual data normalization, the data you know, 'cause there's a lot of data and probably a lot of different systems within Denver. How do you centralize in in enable that so that AI can can give the right responses when people have three, one, one questions or otherwise?

Suma (16:01.829)

That's great question, Brett. And I get asked these this question by several CIOs from various cities and counties saying how did Denver get started, right? They're sometimes the fear is so paralyzing that they're like, you know, should I get my data s to be this perfect place before I can start using AI? And and the answer is somewhere in the middle, right? So you need to get your data to a good enough format, where you know and and again I'm very lucky that my three one one team knows this data inside out. So

Brett House (16:17.824)

Yeah.

Suma (16:31.525)

They've been working on it, they've been fine tuning it, they've been making the data models extremely robust. And then there's the human in the loop. the training is always, always double, triple checked by my team. And then the the cleansing of the data and making sure that it's all ready for AI has always been the first priority. The responsible AI, I can't stress that enough. So that's what got us started, but I've seen CIOs just say, I I don't have the resources to get the data. My thing.

Brett House (16:58.921)

Yeah. That's a big part of the problem, right?

Suma (17:01.539)

Yeah, don't wait for it to be perfect. S get started, iterate, do a small pilot and then apply AI, see what you get because you learn more about your data using AI. Fine tune it, iterate, build another V P and go from there. So it's it's a process.

Brett House (17:15.871)

Yeah, that we used to call that GEMO, GEMO, g good enough move on, right? Which is an important Yeah. And I think in today's sort of product lifecycle and data life cycles and innovation life cycles, they're so much more compressed and they're in it's so much quicker to to prototype and to test and to learn that you you the old life cycles of like you gotta build this thing, it's gotta be, you know, battle tested before you even start experimenting with it are kind of over.

Suma (17:20.611)

Yep. Don't make the perfection, right?

Brett House (17:42.166)

How do you build guardrails or or optimizations once you push this stuff out? You realize, ooh, 301 response got messed up in this instance or or something broke. How how do you create that governance and that, you know, fire putting out the fire, so to speak?

Suma (17:59.011)

Information governance Information Governance Committee, we have a cross functional group of leaders that come together and look at our policy, look at that responsible use, create enough guardrails. that is the most critical step, even more than getting your data perfect, right? So and I and we want non technical people on that committee, not just technical people, right? Because that's when you get those nonlinear perspectives, that'll shape your policy to be

Brett House (18:14.409)

Yeah.

Brett House (18:19.657)

Yeah.

Suma (18:24.387)

much more inclusive and we have the office of our equity office actually be part of the conversation too. So that is the fun fr foundational fundamental step and then you can build on top of that. So and then again that human in the loop we've even before we released Sunny to the public there we were asking it all kinds of questions that may come up and we fine tuned it so that it won't hallucinate, right? So that's a big part.

Brett House (18:31.232)

Yeah.

Suma (18:50.051)

And it's an encapsulated GPT within our instance of the cloud, so it never reads off of the internet. So that's a very important consideration as well.

Rio (18:50.467)

Yeah.

Brett House (18:57.023)

Yeah, yeah.

Rio (18:57.4)

So looking at the Sunday app suma, it looks like so my understanding of it, I mean, having used it a few times, it like it it it first acts as like a concierge almost, right? And then if but if you need to speak to a human, yeah. I thought this is very important. If you need to speak to a human, you can. It's not a problem. It's not preventing you from it. It's just adding another additional layer to actually help you. I thought this was a very smart way of doing things. Was there what was the thinking when you when you when when when it was being designed? Was that was that something that came out loud and clear when you were doing your your research? How did that come about?

Suma (19:05.218)

Yes, and it does do out. Yep.

Suma (19:10.553)

Yeah. Yeah.

Suma (19:26.477)

Yeah, but residents are demanding a lot more of their government, right? and speaking in your marketing terms, Rio, is the omnichannel experience, right? So it's very important to have residents have those kinds of channels and Sunny is one of that. So what started as like, you know, let's build more digital experiences for our residents actually turned out in the era of r resources and budget. Denver had a two fifty million dollar budget deficit last year.

Sunny actually came through and helped us pull through the satisfaction in the NPS course, because we didn't have the people to actually do all of the staffing. So

Brett House (20:03.465)

Yeah. And it was a small budget. I mean what I read was a hundred and sixty five thousand dollars to get this thing off the ground. I mean

Suma (20:08.771)

Yeah, it's a very, very small budget. And that's why I'm like, you know, you don't need like a huge AI budget to get stuck.

Brett House (20:14.332)

Yeah, which is incredible.

Rio (20:15.342)

That's amazing. You never like pre AI, you never could have deployed almost anything for that for that. That's r that's really incredible.

Suma (20:19.203)

Yeah. Everything was eighteen months and you know, six you know, a six figure.

Rio (20:23.746)

Seven figures minimum, right? You know, like to to your point before, there'd be multiple stage gates as you tested things, user tested them, deployed them. That that's really incredible to how it's sped up product development, production. It's it's really amazing. So like looking at

Suma (20:35.691)

We have internal tools too, right, because our service desks team is very small, so the routine like password resets and things are actually going through our service now bot, which is helping with some of those very fundamental level one type of tickets right now. It's helping free up the space for our service desk to go do the value add for our agency partners, right, and our employees, which is sixteen thousand plus employees, right? So

Brett House (20:49.673)

Yeah.

Brett House (21:00.873)

Yeah. And and that and that seems to be the strategic direction of AI in general, is take a lot of those mundane tasks, whether it's the data wrangling that data scientists and analytics have to do, which could be eighty percent of their job at least in the past, right? To answering the kind of first level tickets, those customer success tickets, which are the simplest and easiest things to automate, but often take times they're so voluminous they take up a huge amount of human capital and time. So it's like moving people's so do you see how do you see

Suma (21:24.165)

That's true. Yeah.

Brett House (21:29.125)

you know, I guess pivoting over to the this notion of of you know imp implementing AI capabilities to handle a lot of this stuff, but is the government doing stuff to help with AI training and readiness and job readiness for the general public in in Denver?

Suma (21:45.219)

Yep, we are forming various partnerships with our vendor partners. for example, we are doing a CLOD training. It's being orchestrated right now with Anthropic and Amazon. it's a partnership so that we can get more of the training for Claude training, right? To just again give more tools to our employees because again the resource constraints are

real. so this is a tool in their toolbox. And the workshops again are geared towards non-technical people. Some of them are like more technical, like for example we have a bedrock embedded anthropic license versus a covert license. So trying to distinguish the different types and making sure that we actually are looking at the various types of training that is needed and meet people where they are.

Brett House (22:37.545)

Yeah. Have you implemented programs that affect the public as well, like in terms of the you know, the general citizen of Denver being able to to get just some sort of job or AI or technical training?

Suma (22:48.655)

So the we are partnering with the Office of Economic Development on cre for formats for the general training. it's still being worked out again. The budget constraint is is the biggest threat at this point.

Brett House (22:51.816)

Okay.

Brett House (23:00.288)

Yeah.

Rio (23:01.762)

So Silva, you were among the first, I know you were Denver's first chief AI officer, and among the first in the country. I mean, I'd want to know like your thoughts and other cities that are considering this or like wh why should a city have a chief AI officer? And like, like like or like what are they missing out on if they don't have

Suma (23:19.307)

I strongly believe that you need to own your own destiny with AI. If you let someone else do it, it may you may not like the outcome, right? So you need to educate yourself, be fearless in embracing AI, not to say be reckless, two different things. so it's important to ensure that you your tech roadmap, whether you like it or not, the vendors are actually including AI in all of their roadmaps. How do you stay on

on top of it, right? So it's important for the leader, not just to maintain infrastructure and network, to be on top of these emerging technologies in a very responsible way. So I think every city should look at it. you know, people are like, I'm so afraid of AI, I'm going to close my front and back doors. And then it's seeping through the windows and vents and any any little hole that it can find, right? So

Brett House (24:09.193)

Yeah, yeah. You know, I've had I've had friends say I'd rather retire at this point in my career, late in my career, than actually have to have to learn all this stuff. And I'm like, you know, where's the curiosity?

Suma (24:19.759)

the the the sense of curiosity is important and the other thing that's that's very very important is you have AI natives like our next generation of workforce they they are born with Claude they're born with open AI, right? How do you ensure that you're talking to them and meeting them where they are? if you say I'm not going to learn and I'm not going to have a sense of curiosity, you are doing a disservice to those next generation of art leaders that are going to shape the future of this country.

Rio (24:48.322)

Yeah, we had digital natives right now, we have AI natives. And it is a I don't disagree at all that this is actually a fundamental paradigm shift in the way people use technology. And I do agree that the way certainly the way I interact with like all of my tools has changed since since I started using AI. So I'm imagining for younger people who are just coming of age and this is how they start to interact with things, is gonna ful it's gonna fundamentally impact and form the way that they they view the world and they use things and work. So I that is a really good point.

Brett House (24:49.013)

Well said.

Brett House (25:16.073)

Yeah. And th and there's cer sorry. Yeah, no, and there's certainly what I've seen is there's certainly kind of a growing level of distrust, especially amongst the younger generation. I have, you know, two teenage boys and you know, they make kind of statements that they're hearing kind of in the in the you know, whether it's the TikTok or Instagram or social media ecosystem. Yeah, yeah, there's a backlash, kind of an anti tech black backlash from the younger generation, feeling that they're being kind of manipulated.

Rio (25:17.442)

Looking at like the go ahead, Brett. No, go ahead.

Rio (25:35.354)

you'll say, it hallucinates, it's no good. Yeah, there's a backlash, yeah.

Brett House (25:44.784)

And which, you know, what my oldest son says, you know, you don't you wouldn't understand, Dad. I I was screwed by social media. you know, because he feels he feels like his his almost his attention has been almost gamed, right? Like he and he's like, I can't control it and I know that this is a problem. yeah, like how how are you guys, you know, from a from an education standpoint, kind of you know, because I I there are there's a lot of bad PR out there. Sometimes it's the the actual

Suma (25:53.057)

Trial. I mean

Rio (25:53.976)

Not wrong.

Brett House (26:13.763)

people that run the companies like Dario saying stuff that seems to yeah, that's not helping the the situation. How how have you I mean I'm assuming there's a lot of both internal education but also sort of city wide education into into the value and what this really means.

Rio (26:16.598)

It's not helping. Yeah.

Suma (26:29.815)

It's a big question for our generation. How is AI going to shape us? And that's why it's so important for us to educate our ourselves rather than fear it, right? we have to be good, thoughtful, intentional consumers of AI and social media. it's it's extremely important that we look at the risks when we put like information that makes it so personalized, they know everything about you.

Brett House (26:38.302)

Yeah.

Suma (26:59.103)

And that's scary. But if you want that free ten percent discount because you're willing to click on that ad, you know that your information is being sold. There are settings that we need to look at on what information is being sold or published to other websites. Be active advocates for yourself when you're clicking on that. Is that discount worth getting all your personal information out there?

Brett House (27:00.607)

Yeah.

Brett House (27:21.994)

Yeah.

Rio (27:26.775)

It might be, yeah.

Suma (27:27.653)

consumers of anything social media, anything AI is extremely critical. Again, that's why I say you are your Yeah, do not do that.

Brett House (27:34.943)

Don't put your head in the sand, right? Right? Yeah, 'cause that's that's gonna disempower you and the people around you, yeah, by definition.

Rio (27:43.673)

Summa pivoting to the concept of smart cities for a moment, this is something I know it's a buzzword. Like it there was seven, eight years ago where everyone was talking smart cities, they kind of faded for a while. I think with AI, maybe it's being reborn in a pot very positive way. Love your thought on like what is this smart city? And is this, is this a concept that Denver is embracing? And like where do you see it going?

Suma (28:07.417)

Yeah, that's a great question. I know the smart city word is like ever changing. It means something every single day. For me, smart cities is where the community is vibrant, they're engaged, they have all the resources at their fingertips. Whether that comes through a IoT device on Sixteenth Street or it comes through a mobile notification, those are all smart city ideas, right? Again, it's how do you ensure that communities are living their best lives in the city and county of Denver.

Brett House (28:26.09)

Yeah.

Suma (28:37.049)

where there's access and equity and information that's serving the public. That's how I look at smart cities. The technology can be changing. It'll they'll come up with something else next next year.

Brett House (28:49.119)

Yeah, well, I mean everything from emergency response to traffic lights. I mean, at the very at the very least, have your track traffic lights synced and speaking to one another. New York City does a very good job of that, where you can drive, you know, for two miles on green lights, you know, but it's but it you can tell when you go to other places where that's not implemented. And that to me is it's smart infrastructure. There's obviously machine learning and AI behind a lot of the stuff. Emergency alerts on your phone, when there's you know, things like that. Those are all very

Suma (29:15.509)

Safe cities, again, safety is is is a bottom line, right? Again, if you reduce the fatalities on the street, that's a that's a big smart city initiative for me, right? human trafficking, if if there's a technology that can help with that. If if a child gets abducted or kidnapped, you know, if there's a technology that can help with that, you know, that's that's smart city. because human life

Brett House (29:35.399)

And is it are you guys implementing stuff like that? I mean police responsiveness as well. I know the city of Yep.

Suma (29:39.385)

No emergency response for sure, right? And we have you know, we work very closely with the Department of Public Safety and ensure that the technology is up to up to power f and keeping humans in the in the middle of all of this conversation.

Brett House (29:53.396)

Yeah. So you guys are overseeing their technology infrastructure or are you developing stuff within your own team and sharing it with other departments for implementation? I mean, how does that look?

Suma (30:02.605)

It's a combination. Some of them are super specialized software that again we ensure that the cybersecurity standards are met and they have guardrails in place, but we also have in house tools. so it's a by partner it ranges the whole spectrum.

Brett House (30:19.476)

Yeah.

Rio (30:20.92)

By the I really like that response, Sumba, the fact that like when I asked about Spar Cities right away, you were thinking, well, it's actually it's about the people, right? It's about making their lives better, improving their access, improving in improving equity. That that's really that's interesting. I think a lot of people from from from just from tech, like when they think smart cities or they think anything digital, they think about technology right away. They don't really think about who's gonna be impacted and why are we doing this in the first place. So I I really like that. Now

Suma (30:27.129)

Yeah, it's about humans. Yeah.

Suma (30:45.423)

Please

Rio (30:46.734)

Like thinking about like what does that mean for future technology leaders who maybe want to who are in the private sector, who are interested in potentially like looking at public service, like like I love your thoughts on that. Like like is that is that part of the argument about why it's so why why it's attractive about improving lives, about focusing on the citizens?

Suma (31:06.713)

Yep. I would say everybody with a technology background or any other background should have a stint in the public sector. My eyes opened big time when I joined the public sector. I was like, you know, the the stereotypical city worker or state worker was blown away when I joined the public sector. Like it was so great to see these leaders that can make so much more money somewhere else, giving it the very, very best. Some of the most brilliant colleagues that I had the privilege of working with.

And you know, this notion that tech public sector is slow, it's bureaucratic, yes, it's because we have to have enough guardrails in place. We can be just this is sacred duty to safeguard tax dollars, safeguard your data, safeguard all the things that are important to residents, but there's also extreme amounts of innovation that's happening at the same time.

I was in the public s private sector where we were still thinking about an ERP modernization. And we I'm now in the public sector where we're building platforms AI enabled which are driving efficiencies like the private sector can only imagine.

Brett House (32:20.489)

Yeah. So you're driving you're you're changing perception about the public sector, which often people think of as the government, it's slow, it's technically technically behind behind the times. And and then sometimes the they're not operating at the speed of technology. And it's great that that people like you can be employed employed by the government to help governments get up to the speed of tech. And and when I think of the speed of technology, I think of like government regulation, right? And there was the Colorado AI Act. We had a a guest from the it was University of Colorado

Rio (32:27.192)

Being slow, yep. Backwards.

Brett House (32:49.941)

Boulder, right? yeah, Chinu Paranandi, who is who's an associate professor, and so he was great and he was talking a lot about the regulatory environment, you know, state versus federal law, right? And and you know, we talked about the Colorado AI Act, which which I think was paused, right? They didn't

Rio (32:50.872)

Yeah, Boulder. Yep. Yeah, we had a

Rio (32:55.564)

He he was great, yeah.

Rio (33:06.808)

Well they they amended it recently, yeah. They like they and they pulled us on the amend amended version which is which is a lot better. So

Brett House (33:12.797)

Yeah. And and what's your perspective on what was what was there before, what the amended version looks like? Was it too heavy handed to start with? I mean and where do you what do you see this going from a state perspective going forward or city perspective?

Suma (33:23.267)

Regulation is very, very important. you know, the moment something goes wrong, where do the residents look? why did the government not regulate this? Why did they not do this? They immediately want government to answer the questions, right? But then when you regulate it like, government is so heavy handed, they just don't get it, you know, they're stifling innovation. The answer is always the middle ground, right? You have to have enough regulation in place where you're not selling information to the wrong people.

Brett House (33:43.87)

Yeah.

Suma (33:51.769)

But at the same time you can't stifle innovation too. So it's it's it's a combination, right? That's why having that very responsible mindset with with whatever emerging technology is important. I've been following the Colorado AI law. I've been part of the Colorado Technology Association that had a hand in it. the the law as it was written, or if it was going to be implemented, was going to be very, very cumbersome for small businesses to prove that, you know,

the the the use of AI and all of that and it was going to kill the innovation in Colorado. We need more jobs. We need more economic stimulus type of things within Colorado and that was not very helpful, right? So I think the modified law and where the regulation where it's going, it needs a little bit more tweaking, but I I think it's going in the right direction.

Brett House (34:42.121)

Yeah, there's a business friendliness play there and and Denver does have a growing you know s small company sector, like a growing innovation sector with startups and around both, you know, tech and AI, right? So clearly important.

Suma (34:44.483)

Yes.

Rio (34:54.818)

Yeah. by the way, Sue, but yeah, like some Brittany Moore Saunders, who is the head of the C T C T A Colorado Technology. So she's being gonna be in a pod in couple of weeks. We're really excited to have her on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Britt Brittany's fantastic. And then and I I was r like in my personal opinion on the law, I thought it was too heavy-handed when it was first signed. It was rushed through. And I think the amended version is you haven't read it the whole thing, but it seems to be a big improvement. And I understand you like the the the the

Suma (34:54.974)

How do we ensure that we are not burdening the

Suma (35:04.237)

That's awesome. Yeah, she's great. She's fabulous.

Rio (35:22.54)

The city government was very was influential, certainly, and in pushing that and pushing some of those changes through, which is very good. But like, but like I think part of the reason that law passed was like this backlash, like the Brett mentioned against tech, against AI. Like, like how is how is the city government responding to that? I know you covered it a little bit already, but love to hear your thoughts specifically on it. Are you hearing it? Like are there, are there, are there like is it have you there's been has there been any success countering that narrow?

Suma (35:47.929)

Yeah, I think you know, some of the technology leaders are maybe not listening to the communities that are actually feeling the repercussions of all of this innovation and technology, right? So there again needs to be a middle ground. I would say the data centers is a big question mark right now. There's a huge outcry against data centers because of the resources that it uses.

Brett House (36:11.881)

Yeah, is it is it gonna poison our water, poison our land, take our land, right? Yeah, use our electricity, raise our rates. Yeah.

Rio (36:14.742)

Use our electricity, raise our rates.

Suma (36:14.775)

Yeah. Yeah. And these are very, very important questions, right? Like again, you don't want your water to be polluted and we don't want it in our neighborhood, so it needs to be in someone else's neighborhood. And how is that okay, right? How do we ensure those people that don't even understand what a data center is and it's in their community? How do you ensure that education is there, right? So the consumption of these GPUs is maddening. everybody wants like the speed of light internet and they want all these apps on their phone to work,

Ownight and you know, we we can't stop with the freaking cat videos. If you as a consumer can't stop, you know, using your TikTok and Instagram and all that stuff, th where is the solution, right? Maybe y you as a consumer may not need all of that. Are you willing to sacrifice a little bit as a consumer too so that you're not depending on that high speed applications on your mobile phone to be available twenty four by seven? If you're not willing to do that, who is

responsible for not building enough data centers. Right? They're the it's all related and people are looking at it just strictly through I don't want AI data center, but I'm not willing to give up my phone.

Brett House (37:26.195)

Yeah yeah. They're they're looking

Rio (37:26.744)

But yeah, I I wanna use AI, but I don't don't want to but I don't want an AI dentist center in my backyard. Yeah, so something's gotta give to your point, right? I mean there's gotta be

Suma (37:29.869)

Yeah. Yeah.

Brett House (37:32.841)

Yeah, yeah. And and I think yeah, and I think the answer's the middle ground. I mean, to your point, right? There's the people tend to look through their own sel self-interested lenses, whether they're within a company and they're and they're focusing on their department and their goals, you know, to to and sometimes ignoring others and not thinking holistically. Same thing, same thing.

Suma (37:48.677)

Yeah, and then you know this you know, people live streaming why they hate data centers. Think about that.

Rio (37:56.29)

While yeah.

Brett House (37:56.63)

Yeah. Yeah, I think that slowed down our internet connection to can, right? We were

Suma (38:00.025)

Yeah, like you have seventeen of them live streaming a protest against data center. Put your damn phone down and then you protest, right?

Brett House (38:04.532)

Yeah, yeah.

Rio (38:05.058)

Yeah, no, it yeah, it's it's cra it's crazy.

Yeah. Now in the data centers, I mean, I think the narrative, Brett, to your point earlier, that's being pushed by some of the tech companies, specifically AI companies, hasn't been helpful, like coming out and saying it's going to eliminate all these jobs. When I I we've seen very little proof, if any, proof of that so far. In fact, if anything, it seems to be creating jobs. We certainly haven't seen the mass layoffs, even in industries that seem the most susceptible, like like Uber drivers, for example, who haven't been, or even warehouse workers, even in these data center build-outs are creating loads of great.

Brett House (38:17.557)

Yep.

Rio (38:37.912)

high paying blue collar jobs for the actual electricians, construction, et cetera. So I think that's something lost in the the tech industry could do a much better job on on the PR side, frankly. So but it is good to hear like the that the government is trying to counter that narrative.

Suma (38:52.069)

Yep. It it's important again to think about people have lost logical reasoning. Everything is a cause, everything is which is great. I'm glad the people are passionate about it. But also have that scientific reasoning and the grounding in why we are doing what we're doing.

Brett House (39:08.585)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so so that's that leads me to this question, is is what's harder sort of leading through technology, which is which is tough, right? We're going through kind of a generational shift in technology innovation right now, or leading through the kind of human change and organizational change. I mean, do you think that one's easier or harder, or do you think the human change is the where the challenge lies?

Suma (39:28.397)

Humans have evolved, humans are extremely resilient. you know, the internet was supposed to do this, whatever. AI is supposed to do. So I think again, the human spirit always wins. There's never a replacement for human intelligence, there's never a replacement for emotional intelligence. a machine simply can't learn it, right? So I believe in that. How we use AI or any other technology is truly dependent on how we as humans control it rather than it controlling it.

Brett House (39:34.571)

Yeah. Remember Y2K?

Brett House (39:58.602)

Yeah, yeah.

Rio (40:01.236)

One thing we've seen from AI at a lot of places, I look in my job that we're working with who are adopting AI, it ends up being less of a technology issue than an org structure, an org design, and roll and roll and skill issue. So it's so for example, we're saying that when I work with marketing departments to help them think about what are we going to look like in the future to be better prepared.

It's not like they need fewer people necessarily, but they need different people, right? They don't need maybe some of these specialist roles. They need more generalist roles, then they're organized very differently. So in a lot of ways, it becomes an an org design and change management exercise when implementing II AI, which I think is very different than we would have imagined three or four years ago when this whole thing started. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that and how is that impacting city government at all?

Suma (40:44.643)

Yeah, th roles are shifting, right? again, do we have enough resources to solve for all the problems that Denver has? No. So AI is a tool in our toolbox or any other technology, right? So the change management, maybe there's a little bit of adjustment from the human skill standpoint, right? And also see it on the flip side, which is actually very encouraging, which is for people with maybe English as not their first language, which I am one of them, right? It's actually giving me skills and tools

To polish my presentation a little bit more, right? So that's a great thing. it's helping me like you know, come up with a much more sophisticated version of the presentation with some of the tools, I would say, right? So I think again, a little bit of adjustment, a little bit of refinement, a little bit of seeing where chips may fall, like with these additional tools, that organizational societal change is going on as we speak, right?

throughout the the the world right now. And again if you think about the United States, that we are the powerhouse of technology and innovation, but countries like China and Russia are actually leapfrogging, right? So it's this balance that we need to find between all these different countries and where their ambitions are and where does the United States fall in that? Where does our human selves where do we fall in all that equation change? It it's a very interesting time.

Do we have all the right answers? No. One thing I would say is we have to question the systems that are being designed right now. And we need to educate ourselves so that we can ask the right questions.

Brett House (42:25.417)

Yeah, 'cause tha that's the only way you're gonna get it right, right? It's it's sort of like a collective governance, right? Question in in in sometimes our messy democracy as the US and all this push and pull and extremes pulling in different directions is actually what helps us to to get to the right decisions oftentimes. It's not it's not a it's not a

Suma (42:43.343)

Yep. I I I'll

Rio (42:43.426)

Yeah, we get to the right decision after shying after showing all the wrong ones, right? We usually we we eventually get to the right one.

Brett House (42:48.659)

Yeah, it there's advantage to there's advantages to a messy democracy versus a top down system where you're not really interrogating or pressure testing the decisions that are being rolled out. It's just, you know, and that and that's I think the fundamental advantage we as a country have over a country like China when it comes to this sort of i this innovation arms race, whatever you want to call it, this cold AI war that we're that we're sort of fighting, right? Is that we have this advantage of the messiness.

Suma (42:48.783)

We we will get to the right one. I believe in in humanity. Yep.

Suma (42:57.913)

Yeah. Yeah.

Brett House (43:15.891)

of our society is in the divisions in our society is actually what creates the the the like creates our competitive advantage, I think. Yeah.

Suma (43:23.82)

And creates a balance.

Rio (43:28.888)

So I know that you've got stopping the top of the hour. So maybe we go to quick hits and then and then make and follow it up with a couple of wrap up questions. Does that sound good, Suma? Brett, you wanna start?

Suma (43:36.687)

Yep, sounds great.

Brett House (43:37.821)

All right. So th yeah, thanks for the this has been a riveting conversation. We could go on for hours about this stuff and thanks for getting theoretical with us once we get into those kind of theoretical topics. So speaking of theoretical, AI technology you're most excited about.

Suma (43:53.498)

the ones that are being used in frontier labs, as I mentioned before, where we can find a cure for cancer. I've lost my dad to the side effects of cancer. so anything that can help with diagnosis, with clinical trials, that's my number one passion topic.

Brett House (44:13.707)

Yeah.

Rio (44:14.99)

Drug discovery, yeah. Nice. Sumba, what's an AI technology you feel is currently being way overhyped?

Suma (44:22.629)

There's so many. I would say the ones with image generation and all of that, you know, the AI generated content is I I I'm not a huge fan.

Brett House (44:34.409)

Yeah, yeah. And and it like there's there's fear, I think, out there that eventually like ninety percent of our content's gonna be AI generated in one shape, form, or the other, and you're in your Yeah, we're well on our way. And yeah, we call it we as as Ray would say, the AI slop cannon. That's what he likes to say. It's you know, but you do you do get a flattening and a lack of differentiation across all this content. And it sort of does take the human sometimes out of the out of the the the mix. So so what do you think? And I think back to the government, what is the biggest

Rio (44:42.254)

We're we're well on our way. It's more than half today.

Suma (44:49.524)

Ha ha ha.

Brett House (45:03.623)

misconception. We've talked a little bit about this, about government technology.

Suma (45:08.805)

Government technology is sometimes leapfrogging even private sector technology. Come work for a public sector entity and you'll be blown away.

Brett House (45:18.121)

You heard it here on signal and noise. Right? And and that's not an assumption that most people would make, right? And it's great to see that you guys are taking the ball by the horns and sort of

Rio (45:18.936)

Like that.

Suma (45:26.277)

Yeah, and what happened during COVID, right? Like everybody depended on government to get everything through, like so.

Brett House (45:32.115)

Yeah.

Rio (45:33.614)

Part of the reason why I think Denver's been successful is you we we do have a mayor who's been very pro-tech and very forward looking. And I think he's been a magnet for people like you from the private sector, who he's been able to recruit, which is which is a nice competitive advantage. But looking outside of Denver, what's one other city that you think is really doing a great job in terms of tech adoption, AI that you really like to call out?

Suma (45:52.695)

I think global cities. London actually is doing quite a bit. you know, there's yeah, I love what they're doing. Yeah, Singapore, like, you know, the cities there are doing quite a bit, right? And New York is doing quite quite a lot too and San Jose, so San Diego, so you have like some great cities that are doing quite a bit of innovation to help their communities, so

Rio (45:57.839)

One of my favorite cities in the world. I love love that city.

Brett House (45:59.392)

Yes, definitely in the top three, yep.

Brett House (46:19.891)

You you didn't mention San Francisco, like the the birthplace of the Tech Yeah, yeah. It's like that almost goes without saying, like the Tech Bros home base, right?

Suma (46:22.223)

San Francisco they have you know, all the wealth and tech. So, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. Hopefully they're investing in their communities in SFO. But for me these these other cities that may not have that traditional tech access still doing innovation is fascinating.

Brett House (46:40.991)

Yeah, that now that's awesome. and and what would you say, you know, speaking of like the organizational human challenges around bringing this type of innovation into your organization or into your private organizations, what's the most underrated leadership skill like amongst all this change?

Suma (47:00.623)

The human aspect of all of this is predominantly what's going to pull us through all the challenges. there's always that human resilience and human intelligence and human emotional value that will make all of this be better.

Brett House (47:18.709)

Yeah.

And does it mean translation, like translating some of what is tech speak and and and hype into like what this actually means to people on the ground? Yeah.

Rio (47:34.936)

I love the human aspect of that. I I we're seeing it in a lot of areas. We just got back from Can Lion, you know, the festival of creativity out in in southern France. And there's so much talk about in real life about how real life human-to-human interactions are, if anything, becoming more important as people are like bombarded by by AI slop. So I think that's a r that's a really good call out. And then looking looking ahead, I I mean, I like to make predictions. I know not everyone

else does, but what's one prediction you'd l you'd like to make that things we'll see happen by twenty thirty in terms of like city government? It could be anything, tech, governance, anything you want to call out.

Suma (48:14.965)

the recursions within AI are happening so fast, it's hard to predict where all of this will go. But one thing I'm hoping and my hope for humanity is that we find our human cells with all these efficiencies that AI is creating.

Brett House (48:31.571)

Yep. Yep. And and I think that's a good balance between the tech and the and the human, the spiritual, the you know, back to the the Buddhist monk comment, right. It's it it it there is a fascinating intersection that we don't

Suma (48:43.043)

I hope there's less hatred in the world, I hope there's more tolerance for each other, I hope we see each other as more human than we currently are, and I hope AI can help us get there faster.

Brett House (48:56.031)

Yeah. And well, I think we should end with that. I mean, I think that's a that's like a blessing right there, right? thank you, Suba, for being a guest. This has been a great conversation. We really appreciate your time. good luck to everything that you're doing in Denver and beyond. it's fascinating and and we'll we'll certainly love to hear as you as you go down this path, how things have changed and things that you've implemented going forward. So we definitely love to have you on the on the podcast at a later date. And for those that have made it this far.

Rio (48:59.342)

So great positive message to end on, yeah.

Rio (49:06.734)

Totally.

Brett House (49:25.993)

Visit us at w wsignal and noise.ai. follow us on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. And we will and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks, everybody.

Rio (49:32.312)

Wherever you eat your podcasts, we're there.

Suma (49:35.727)

Thank you so much for having me.