AI-Curious with Jeff Wilser
Every week, Jeff Wilser sits down with the people building, breaking, and reckoning with AI — from the CEO of Upwork to the pioneer who coined "AGI" to an AI social network where bots wrote manifestos and had existential crises. Wilser is the author of eight books, AI keynote speaker, and the kind of interviewer who'd rather find the story no one's telling than rehash the headline everyone's read. Named by Inc. Magazine as one of the best ways to get AI-savvy. Included in UC Berkeley's data science curriculum.
AI-Curious with Jeff Wilser
How San Jose is Harnessing AI (and What We Can Learn From It), w/ Mayor Matt Mahan
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Can a city use AI to cut red tape, fill potholes faster, and shave minutes off commutes—without sliding into surveillance? We sit down with San José’s mayor, Matt Mahan, to unpack how a highly regulated public institution can adopt AI pragmatically and responsibly. In this episode, we dig into the playbook: pilots that become policy, guardrails that build trust, and workforce upskilling that actually moves the needle.
We cover how bus routes now hit fewer red lights, why real-time translation boosts civic inclusion, what “privacy by design” looks like for license-plate readers, and how a 10-week AI curriculum is turning city staff into hands-on builders. We also press on the risks—bias, privacy, and transparency—and explore where city AI is headed next: transit, permitting, and procurement.
Highlights
- From pilots to scale: Bus route optimization with Light AI cut red-light hits by 50%+ and reduced travel time by 20%+, now rolling out citywide.
- Inclusion by default: Real-time multilingual access (e.g., Wordly) and improved translations informed by San José’s deep Vietnamese-language data.
- Eyes on the street, not faces: No facial recognition, strict retention, no third-party data sharing, and tightly controlled access to ALPR data.
- Upskilling at scale: A 10-week AI curriculum (plus a data track) with San José State; staff build custom GPTs (including a budget-analysis GPT) to speed analysis.
- Culture that ships: A “coalition of the willing,” clear problem statements, and a Mayor’s Office of Technology & Innovation to operationalize change.
- Road ahead: Smarter mass transit, faster permitting, and streamlined procurement—practical abundance without new tax dollars.
If you’re new here, we’d love your support—subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube, and consider leaving a quick rating or sharing this episode with a colleague who’s wrestling with real-world AI adoption.