Former Iqaluit mayor launches AI-driven site to monitor municipal issues
City Hall Record scrapes City of Iqaluit website, meetings and documents
Former Iqaluit Mayor Kenny Bell, seen here in a June file photo, launched the website City Hall Record to inform fellow citizens about long-term issues addressed by city council. (Photo by Daron Letts)
How many new homes can Iqaluit’s water reservoir support?
Former Iqaluit mayor Kenny Bell is using artificial intelligence program ChatGPT to investigate this question and more, on his newly launched City Hall Record website.
The idea, Bell said, is to track long-term municipal issues that may have fallen by the wayside.
“I’m engaging as a citizen that’s also interested in our community,” Bell said Friday in a phone interview. “It’s really hard to go on the city website and find minutes and listen to records and stuff — especially if you don’t know what you’re looking for.”
Bell was elected to a four-year term as Iqaluit mayor in 2019. He resigned in 2022.
This week, he posted what he calls his first investigation, which charts a timeline of Iqaluit’s water woes through the city’s website, council and committee meetings, and public documents.
The water capacity of the city’s reservoir, Lake Geraldine, was a major issue during his tenure, with many years spent in a state of emergency with mandatory water conservation efforts.
He tried to see if ChatGPT could determine how many more homes the existing municipal water infrastructure could service. The program reported it had 13 unanswered questions, which have been sent to City of Iqaluit spokesperson Geoff Byrne.
“No response has been recorded here yet,” the website reported as of Monday.
Nunatsiaq News also asked Byrne for the number of houses the municipal water system can support.
“The figure is approximately 3,230 residential units on a population-equivalent basis,” Byrne replied, citing figures from the city’s 2022 general plan.
During his term as city councillor, Bell often criticized the city for a lack of clarity with the public.
“If I as a councillor can’t get information from the city, I can only imagine that citizens that have concerns can’t get information either,” he said back in 2013.
Bell doesn’t self-define as an independent journalist but as a citizen who is interested in sharing information for the benefit of other citizens, including those who work in the media.
“I want to make it easier for people to understand just how hard most issues are [to follow], even for the people that are in the know,” he said, adding ChatGPT simplifies the work.
“It makes it so easy — you ask it a question and it knows everything,” he said.
Acknowledging the fact that artificial intelligence tends to lean into a user’s biases, Bell said he edits the data before it goes online.
Mayor Solomon Awa declined an interview request about the website and Bell’s concerns about transparency.
Lets remember this when Nunavut get hacked by AI but A for effort. If AI could hire staff and build houses now were rocking. I though he would have come up with a solution to the liquor permit issues with AI.
🤣🤣🤣as if things weren’t bad enough, here rolls in the AI to lie and make it worse.
You DO understand those AI chat bots lie all the time, yes?
Jeeze, I gotta earn enough to get outta here.
And move to where it’s safe from AI? Like down south?
Soooooo NN hated AI reporting last week but now promoting the former disgraced mayor in his latest attempt to do what he does best, push hot air in all directions and accomplish NOTHING!
Anyways, I thought he moved to Iceland?
It’s pretty ironic to see Nunatsiaq News last week slamming AI reporting, only to give Kenny Bell a completely uncritical platform for his new site without verifying a single thing.
Claiming ChatGPT “knows everything” is laughable. A quick look at his site reveals basic errors in council attendance and finances—it’s sloppy, unverified, and full of hallucinations.
The City live-streams its meetings, archives them, and posts agendas and minutes publicly. The info is there for anyone willing to read it; even the reporter got a direct answer on water capacity from the City’s published 2022 General Plan.
This article nor Kenny’s site are serious journalism or civic oversight. It’s an error-ridden vanity project setting up a political comeback, and NN should know better than to run free PR for it. You had a chance to be critical and you blew it!
Well said!
Garbage in, garbage out.
there are things on the intirnet one should not see . my dog toby and i spend hours in front of the intirnet to watch funny dog vidios . howevir unbenownst to us a vidio of a cat will come up and turn my preshious toby into a menace which gives my deer wife the tremores .
i am therefor against the city for putting the intirnet in charge as mayor . they may very well turn into a cat .
Kenny had his opportunity to be relevant to Municipal politics in Iqaluit and he blew it spectacularly.
Some wise man once said if you want to know a man’s true character, give him power.
We gave Kenny power and we saw his true character.
Next!
The same guy who once settled a dispute by “popping” a stranger in the jaw at the grocery store and giving him the “stanky leg” is now positioning himself as the calm, rational fact-checker of City Hall. Bold pivot from fists to prompts.
Kenny once called Nunatsiaq News a cesspool. Now he’s built his own, except this one has no editors, no oversight, and nobody at the wheel but Kenny. Funny how “unfiltered municipal transparency” always seems to come with a filter of exactly one guy…..
Was he wrong about Nunatsiaq? I don’t think so
Well, there you go Nunatsiaq News – The people have spoken. You’re not the great arbiter of truth. We are