The breadth of artificial intelligence (AI) applications has grown significantly, particularly over the last decade, increasing productivity and efficiency across numerous sectors. Cities have become the primary sites of data collection and algorithm deployment, but the professional field of urban planning lacks a comprehensive evaluation of how AI can/should be used to improve analytical processes.

United States prisons exist in geographically bounded, technologically disconnected communities. Restrictions on services and isolation from the outside world, including lack of access to digital devices and the internet in prisons, has restricted prisoners’ opportunities for education and healthcare, has limited their future work and career prospects, and has reinforced divisions between incarcerated people and their communities.

Today we are entirely dependent on centralized infrastructures (aka Cloud) for pretty much all our everyday activities such as online education, neighborhood apps, access to driving directions, and restaurant suggestions in a neighborhood. This reliance on the Cloud has serious implications. Most importantly it is one of the primary causes for the increasing digital divide between the affluent and under-served communities.

Contrary to trends in most rural communities, which are shrinking and aging, many rural Midwestern communities have experienced rapid population growth since the 1980s, as migrants and refugees have been moving there to meet growing labor demand in the agroindustrial sector such as meat and poultry processing. The school-aged residents of these growing Midwestern communities, who are primarily the U.S.-born children of low-skilled workers, represent a significant untapped population of future STEM workers and entrepreneurs who are growing up in, and want to stay in, rural America.