Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence

The Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence (AICOE), located inside the reimagined St. Petersburg Science Center, is designed to serve as West Florida’s public-facing hub for AI capacity building. AICOE helps people and organizations move from curiosity about artificial intelligence to confident, responsible real-world use.

AICOE is intentionally cross-sector and community-anchored. It serves students of all ages, working professionals, nonprofits, local government, entrepreneurs and corporations, recognizing that AI literacy and applied capability are now foundational skills for the entire region.

AICOE’s core purpose is to close the AI capability gap. The challenge is no longer access to technology, but the growing divide between those who know how to use AI effectively and responsibly and those who do not. AICOE addresses this gap through hands-on education, applied labs, structured programs and shared civic learning.

Core Pillars

AICOE operates across four integrated pillars:

Educate – Build AI literacy and practical skills across ages and sectors
Innovate – Apply AI to real problems through development, deployment and iteration
Collaborate – Cross-polinate between corporations, government, nonprofits, educators and students
Advocate – Promote responsible, ethical and community-aligned AI adoption

Hyper-Local AI and Civic Language Models

In addition to general AI capacity building AICOE will focus on hyper-local applications of artificial intelligence that reflect the unique character needs and data of St. Petersburg Florida.

At the center of this effort is the development of Civic Language Models. These are AI models trained exclusively on locally relevant data rather than broad generalized internet-scale datasets. By grounding models in the lived civic and cultural context of a city, AICOE ensures that AI tools are more accurate, more specific and more useful for local decision-making.

Civic Language Models will be built in partnership with Cityverse using:

• Public meeting transcripts and agendas
• City planning documents and permitting data
• Local news and civic communications
• Community created content
• Nonprofit and neighborhood-level data sources
• Historical and cultural archives specific to St. Petersburg

These models are designed to understand local language, local priorities and local context, enabling more precise insight into how policies programs and developments affect the community.

Civic Insight & Sentiment Analysis

Civic Language Models will enable:

• Sentiment analysis for unique data biomes
• Detection of emerging community concerns before they escalate
• Impact measures of how different neighborhoods respond to policies or projects
• Identification of gaps between project intent and public perception

Decision Support for Local Government

AICOE will develop tools that help city staff and elected officials:

• Summarize large volumes of public input quickly and fairly
• Compare community sentiment across time and geography
• Model potential impacts of proposed policies or developments
• Improve transparency by making complex information more accessible

Community-Facing AI Tools

Applications built on Civic Language Models can support:

• Resident-facing chat assistants for city services and FAQs
• Plain-language explanations of civic processes and decisions
• Navigation of local resources for residents and nonprofits
• Multilingual civic engagement and outreach
• Personalized daily engagement with an AI counterpart (Dash)

Ethical and Responsible AI by Design

Because Civic Language Models are locally bounded AICOE can:

• Maintain clearer data provenance and accountability
• Reduce bias introduced by irrelevant or global datasets
• Establish community-informed governance and oversight
• Create replicable standards for responsible civic AI deployment

A Replicable Model for Other Cities

While the data used to train Civic Language Models is unique to St. Petersburg the framework and tooling developed at AICOE can be deployed in other communities.

This creates a scalable model where:

• Each city builds its own localized data biome
• Applications are adapted to local context without retraining from scratch
• Communities gain insight into their own civic language culture and priorities
• Regional and national comparisons can be made without erasing local nuance

AICOE positions St. Petersburg as a national leader in civic AI design, demonstrating how cities can use artificial intelligence to strengthen democracy improve services and better understand their residents.

What Makes AICOE Distinct

AICOE combines the strengths of corporate innovation studios with the mission and accessibility of a public science center. It offers a clear on-ramp for organizations, while embedding public benefit, workforce development and civic responsibility at its core.

Key differentiators include:

• A permanent public-facing physical space inside a science center
• Programming that spans K-12 through executive leadership
• Purpose-built Civic Language Models grounded in local data
• A focus on applied local deployment of AI tools
• A replicable civic AI framework for other cities

The Role of AICOE in the Region

AICOE is not just a place to learn about AI. It is civic infrastructure for the future.

By building local AI capacity and creating tools rooted in community-specific data, AICOE strengthens institutions, prepares the workforce, supports innovation and ensures that AI adoption in St. Petersburg is accessible, responsible and aligned with our specific community values.

AICOE demonstrates how artificial intelligence can be shaped with the community, not just for it, setting a new standard for how cities engage with emerging technology.

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