Students + AI: Making City Government Easier to Understand

On August 26, high school students Ranya, Hanyi, Kabir, and Vincent presented their Sunnyvale Meeting Minutes project to the City Council!

Their idea was simple but impactful: use Python code and AI models to summarize council meeting minutes, which are often 4 to 8 hours long, into just three concise pages. The goal is to make local government more transparent and accessible, allowing more members of the public to understand what’s happening and to participate in civic life.

In their fifteen minutes to present, nearly every council member praised their work. They appreciated that youth were using technology to help bridge the gap between the government and the community. Vice Mayor Linda Sell even asked whether this project had made the high schoolers more interested in serving the public, and many answered yes.

Council members also engaged with the technical side of the project. They asked thoughtful questions about AI challenges such as hallucination (when an AI generates information that isn’t accurate) and how they might “hard-code” important elements, like action items, into the summaries. These questions gave the students valuable guidance on how to refine their approach and build a tool that is not only innovative but also trustworthy and practical.

This experience showed the students how technology and civic engagement can come together. By working on projects like this, they have learned how to use technology in ways that directly benefit the community. The encouragement from the Council motivates them to keep improving, and to continue exploring how data science and AI can strengthen public service.

Access the full video recording here: https://sunnyvaleca.granicus.com/player/clip/4827?view_id=2&redirect=true (2:12:46 - 2:28:23)