Tag: Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Open Data Week 2026 March 22-29, 2026 (and more!)

This event is a half-day in-person drop-in, office hours-style session aimed at human services professionals and similar public sector staff to learn about ways that Open Data and AI might be used to help their organizations, and to share experiences and challenges they currently face. The session will include hands-on activities and demos, educational materials, informal one-on-one discussions, group Q+As, and design activities.

Come and say hi if you have questions like these about Open Data:

  • I want to know where things are. Is there mapped Open Data on where human services resources are located? If I manage a resource can I add to these maps?
  • I want to know about local and State budgeting and finances. Is there public information about civic budgets? Where can I see capital funding allocations, for example?
  • I’m curious about city planning and demographics. What is the makeup of our City? Who lives where, and why?

Or questions like these about AI:

  • I hear a lot about AI and how it will change everything. How are human services organizations responding to this change? What do I need to know?
  • What are the risks of using AI in my work? Are there ways to minimize potential harms to my organization and our clients?
  • AI is everywhere, but what can it actually do? Can you explain how my organization can safely identify and implement AI opportunities?

We will be running activities to help you use Open Data tools to answer questions relevant to your organization’s needs, to understand AI from the perspective of its capabilities (i.e. what it can do for you rather than how it works), and to identify low-risk and low-hanging fruit opportunities for using AI and Open Data in your organization. The first hour will include interactive table demonstrations of open data resources; the second hour will focus on the potential of AI capabilities for documenting impacts and improving organizational performance; the third hour will offer human services and local government agency staff the change to bring their data questions to office hours, meeting with like-minded colleagues, academics with domain expertise in data and AI literacy and student assistants.

About the organizers:

This event extends a series of engagements and conversations we are having with individuals and human services organizations to help navigate change and uncertainty associated with AI, and to help identify and realize opportunities offered by Open Data. We are researchers and educators committed to designing and using technology in the public interest.

  • Lauri Goldkind is Professor of Social Work at the Graduate School of Social Service, Fordham University. She is interested in how digital tools, artificial intelligence and open data can make the lives of individuals in and served by the social sector better. (https://www.laurigoldkind.net)
  • Graham Dove is Assistant Professor at New York University, Tandon School of Engineering. His research in human-computer interaction (HCI) focuses on helping diverse groups of people design and use data-rich technologies and artificial intelligence, without requiring expertise in data science. (https://wp.nyu.edu/tandonschoolofengineering-peopleplustechnology/)

This event will be held in the NYC PIT Pop-Up. Inside the Oculus, the Pop-Up is located on the Main Floor C2, in the South Concourse, at Shop #53 (next to M.A.C. Cosmetics).

As part of NYC Open Data Week 2026, the CUNY Public Interest Technology (PIT) Lab will host a week-long Open Data Takeover of the NYC PIT Pop-Up at the Oculus / World Trade Center. The activation advances Open Data Week’s goals of accessibility, civic learning, and practical use of open data by bringing open data projects into a highly visible, public-facing space. Attendees can drop in at any time during the hours below for a demonstration of the tool and to speak with the presenter. Most of the demos will also be streamed live from the Pop-Up on its Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/cunypitlab). Inside the Oculus, the Pop-Up is located on the Main Floor C2, in the South Concourse, at Shop #53 (next to M.A.C. Cosmetics). View the full PIT Lab schedule. No RSVP needed, just stop by!

[10am-1pm]
Lauri Goldkind – Drop-in Data Discussions & AI Dialogs for Real World Solutions
This is a one-day in-person drop-in, office hours style session aimed at human services professionals and similar public sector staff to learn about ways that Open Data and AI might be used to help their organizations, and to share experiences and challenges they currently face. The session will include hands-on activities and demos, educational materials, informal one-on-one discussions, group Q+A’s, and design activities. The first hour will include interactive table demonstrations of open data resources; the second hour will focus on the potential of AI capabilities for documenting impacts and improving organizational performance; the third hour will offer human services and local government agency staff the change to bring their data questions to office hours, meeting with like-minded colleagues, academics with domain expertise in data and AI literacy and student assistants.

[2pm-6pm]
Kierstin Gray – MindHeart AI: Developing Healing Technologies and Consensual Data Practices in the World of AI
MindHeart AI is a liberatory technology company centering the neuroscience of well being as a catalyst for intergenerational planetary healing. We create trauma-informed technologies that allow individuals to cultivate the necessary awareness to design sustainable pathways to well-being across personal, social, professional and collective communities. Utilizing the Systems Based Awareness Map, the world’s first interactive map of human awareness, we are building a scalable, equitable platform combined with experiences that we call MindHeart Activations – in-person events that support collective healing through combining culturally relevant forms of somatics, contemplative practices, land-based rituals and retreats, music and art, all designed to create an infrastructure of care as a loving response to our awareness of the rising loneliness, stress, isolation and depression experienced across the world.

Sasha Richardson – Black Knowledge Erasure Dataset
The Black Knowledge Erasure Dataset (BKED) is a research archive designed to document how AI models like GPT-5 and Gemini distort Black history and culture through specific “hallucinations”. Rather than viewing these errors as random bugs, the project frames them as “epistemic erasure,” where algorithms invent authorities or omit key figures in ways that mirror historical discrimination. The dataset includes the original prompts, the incorrect AI responses, and human-verified annotations that identify exactly where the models failed against standard archival sources.

Alex Conner – ººSPARK**CIVIC
ºSPARK**AI × ºDO..OS form the intelligence and operating layer behind ºSPARK**CIVIC’s NYC Data Week session, demonstrating how NYC Open Data can move from published datasets to shared understanding and clear next steps. ºSPARK**AI helps interpret complex civic data and policy context into consistent, plain-language meaning, while ºDO..OS ensures that guidance carries forward as reusable actions, templates, and handoffs across committees, agencies, partners, and the public.

Keeping It Urban Summit: AI, Robotics, Design @ Cornell NYC

Keeping It Urban is a one-day summit, kicking off NYC Open Data Week on Friday, March 20th at Cornell Tech. It’s an ode to the diversity and abundance of technology and culture born only from the density of NYC.

This event was born from frustration with the top-down silos we kept seeing: urban tech talks that center on infrastructure and zoning, and AI conversations entirely removed from the people and becoming doomsday narratives. None of it actually acknowledges the creative artists, open-sourced solutions, or the human flourishing that drives the true economic engine of NYC!

So, we’ve curated a full day of 3 stacked panels, 4+ artist showcases, and 5+ startup pitches featuring Streetlife Ventures, Spotify, MIT Media Lab, New York City Council, Sidewalk Labs (Part of Google), Everywhere Ventures, Fauna Robotics, Backslash Artists, and more.

Celebrating the playful, inventive tech being built right now and right here at Cornell Tech & New York City!

Tickets on Luma. More info keepingiturban.com. 

This event will be held at the Tata Innovation Center, Studio 141, 11 E Loop Rd, New York, NY 10044.

Open Data Week 2026 March 22-29, 2026 (and more!)

WeGovNYC’s Databook (databook.nyc) is a data pipeline that indexes, normalizes, and republishes over 60 NYC Open Data datasets as a publicly accessible API and into an interface that offers in-depth profiles of City agencies, public schools, civil service titles, contracts and much more.

Our recent focus is providing tools for people interested in reforming civil service titles and technology procurement. We FOILed for civil service title descriptions, extracted their data, integrated it into Databook along with data visualizations at databook.nyc/titles. We also extracted all data from PassportPublic and Checkbook.NYC to create a new section in Databook connecting vendors, solicitations, agencies, vendors and contracts at https://databook.nyc/procurement.

We will discuss all our tools as well as how we’ve adopted generative AI (vibe coding) to accelerate our development.