curiousChallenge Explorer
AI & Emerging Techintermediate~35 mins

Design an AI-powered system that helps communities identify local problems.

Communities generate signals about their own problems — complaints, photos, sensors — but no one connects the dots.

Real-world context

Communities generate signals about their own problems — complaints, photos, sensors — but no one connects the dots. AI could surface patterns people can act on.

The challenge

Design an AI-powered system that helps communities identify local problems. Study who is affected, dig past the obvious symptoms to the real root causes, and design a solution that could actually work in the real world. There is no single correct answer — what matters is the quality of your thinking, the stakeholders you consider, and how clearly you justify your chosen direction.

Reflection prompts

  • Who is most affected by this problem, and how did you account for them?
  • What is the single biggest risk to your solution working?
  • Which assumption, if wrong, would break your whole idea?