Montréal’s IVADO and Nord Ouvert publish responsible AI guide for cities

Municipalities are often where AI hits the real world first—through traffic cameras, social services triage, procurement and citizen-facing chatbots. Yet they rarely have in‑house expertise to evaluate complex models or negotiate with large vendors. A guide from Université de Montréal’s IVADO and Nord Ouvert is therefore more important than it might look at first glance: it attempts to give local governments a roadmap for responsible AI adoption, including how to think about data governance, accountability and citizen impact. ([rimq.qc.ca](https://rimq.qc.ca/article/municipal/categorie/technologie/71/1179902/ia-responsable-un-guide-pour-aider-les-municipalites.html))

As we move toward more capable, agentic systems, the frontier labs will not be the only actors shaping outcomes; thousands of under‑resourced public bodies will be making procurement and deployment decisions that cumulatively define how AI feels to ordinary people. If those decisions are guided by thoughtful frameworks, we’re more likely to see deployments that respect rights, maintain human control and generate high-quality feedback signals. If not, we risk a patchwork of opaque, brittle and misaligned systems operating at the edge of public visibility.

Initiatives like this also show how universities can act as intermediaries between abstract AI ethics principles and the messy constraints of municipal practice—a pattern that will need to scale globally as AGI-class systems begin to touch more public functions.