The last few years have seen a wave of AI products entering the public sector. Samsara, an artificial intelligence and technology service provider, is among the companies expanding their municipal footprint. The company offers AI tools for local governments that range from fleet management to asset tracking to pothole detection — with promises of more customized offerings on the way. The company says it currently works with hundreds of cities. Samsara last month hosted its first conference in Chicago catered exclusively to the public sector, complete with demonstrations, workshops and listening sessions with local government officials from across the country. Smart Cities Dive sat down with Samsara Senior Vice President for Sales Engineering Tim Nagy to talk about AI adoption in local government, and what the future of AI in cities could look like. The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Smart Cities Dive: What is it about the public sector that made you decide to expand your AI product offerings there? TIM NAGY: The public sector is, I feel, very underserved by the physical operations technology space, and there is a lot of opportunity for us to partner together and improve operations out in that space. It's such an interesting mix, because in the room today [at Samsara’s Go Beyond Public Sector conference in Chicago May 12], there's no competition; everyone in there is just wanting to brainstorm about ideas and talk with each other and figure out best practices, and that's an interesting dynamic. And it means that, more than in the private sector, we're able to share in groups with people and get a group consensus or feedback, rather than the private sector, where that's a bit harder and people don't want to share trade secrets. And so we started realizing that AI could