From a tree across the road to an AI project with the municipality

It often starts with a small, everyday problem. For me, one of our most interesting AI projects began during a bike ride.

In the summer of 2024, I was out with my daughter when we encountered a tree that had fallen across the road. Nothing dramatic, but when I got home to report it, I found it a bit cumbersome to find the right place on the municipality’s website. It sparked a thought: couldn’t we use generative AI to make such things easier?

I had some code lying around from a previous prototype (an old colleague wanted to build a matching service for children’s clothes – also a fun AI application). It was adapted to analyze a picture I took of the tree lying across the bike path, formulate a case, and match it to the right e-service at Sundsvall Municipality. A fun hack.

I reached out to the municipality and showed what I had built. It led to a really good meeting with passionate people there, and we got the chance to exchange experiences around technology and AI.

A few months passed. During winter 2024, we at Oddly Even got the opportunity to start working on their live platform, then called Intric.

Since then, we, as an independent partner, have been deeply involved in the platform now called Eneo. Building solutions in production has given us a unique understanding of what’s important when introducing AI in the municipal and public sectors. We also bring experience from other assignments in applied AI, from the private sector and fintech.

As developers, we like to think that technology is the solution to everything. But we see that a crucial part is building awareness about what’s actually possible – and what language models, which underlie much of this, can and cannot do. We also see that openness is important: users need to be able to understand what’s happening, see what AI’s recommendations or decisions are based on, and have control over the final result.

It all started with a small, personal “what if.” That’s how we like to work at Oddly Even.

Do you have a challenge or an idea you want to discuss? Get in touch.