Excellent perspective Kenn, and thanks for sharing. As a forward-thinking civil engineer working with many state and local government clients I often find myself daydreaming during and after project meetings. Sort of makes me feel like the boy on the image you included at the beginning of your message. I listen to all the information my clients share. They always have so much institutional knowledge and they tend to sometimes be constrained in addressing what are perceived to be more traditional problems and solutions. More and more I am finding if you are willing transition a formal project meeting to a more open-minded and interactive discussion the outcome can be something special. In my world, I spend a great deal of time talking about “best available data” but it always seems that term is looking at static data – sets of information that have been collected and maybe analyzed, a bit, but not far enough to bring true value. For this reason, I really appreciate your comment “they would be wise to begin educating themselves about the emerging technologies…” So true, and at the same time in our profession we would be serving them best to help start educating them. As we are not bound by the same degree of politics, and as we have a greater depth of resources to begin to understand the ROI of data and technology, we can help them build their model to advance to more of a “self-aware” city. The past few years I have worked with some innovative applications that leverage existing data sets to provide for more efficient decision making. When I think of AI I often immediately have the picture of a shiny robot working over my shoulder, just like the image in your post. But the more I work with clients to develop smart applications the more I realize AI does not need to walk or talk, it does not need to learn emotions. Much is being discussed right now about AI as a near-term reality and even as a threat. That is just to acknowledge the issues are on the table. From my perspective when I think about AI I am thinking about some of the solutions I am working on in the space of water management and also in emergency management applications. From the water perspective, I look out to the 2020 and beyond horizon and I picture a city where water management through IoT applications becomes the defense to offset the risks of flooding, drought and water quality in the treatment and distribution networks. A city where water is managed to the micro level and continues to be an affordable asset to society. Further, I see AI as a means to make more efficient the coordination of response and recovery efforts as we continue to face natural and man-made hazards in our cities and beyond. Bringing the mass number of systems and data already available into a central platform is a step that helps so many to see the vision and begin to work towards the seemingly endless possibilities.