Former Iqaluit mayor launches AI-driven site to monitor municipal issues

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.