Powering Government with Community Voices: How ZenCity Built an AI That Listens

How do you use AI to help city leaders truly hear their residents? In this episode, Teresa Torres talks with Noa Reikhav (SVP of Product), Andrew Therriault (VP of Data Science), and Shota Papiashvili (SVP of R&D) from Zencity, a company that powers government decision-making with community voices. They share how Zencity brings together survey data, 311 calls, social media, and local news into a unified platform that helps cities understand what people care about—and act on it. You’ll hear how the team built their AI assistant and workflow engine by being thoughtful about their data layers, how they combined deterministic systems with LLM-driven synthesis, and how they keep accuracy and trust at the core of every AI decision. It’s a fascinating look at how modern AI infrastructure can turn noisy, messy civic data into clear, actionable insight.