Photo by Matthias Cooper on Pexels

An AI-driven initiative is injecting fresh momentum into the campaign to preserve the historic “Big Pool” in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The “Big Pool Story” project employs AI technology to collect and share community memories surrounding the pool, aiming to galvanize support for its restoration and continued use. Originally constructed in 1945 for workers on the Manhattan Project, the pool has served as a central gathering place for the community for decades. However, it now faces the threat of demolition due to significant deterioration.

The core of the project is Dive AI, a sophisticated chatbot that has been trained on over eight decades’ worth of local records, enabling users to easily access and interact with the pool’s rich history and related civic data. Dive AI is powered by a combination of OpenAI, Pinecone, and a secure VPS infrastructure with Cloudflare and WordPress.

The project’s creator is actively soliciting feedback and seeking collaborators interested in leveraging AI for civic engagement and public-interest initiatives, with a particular focus on community preservation, collective memory, and fostering public participation. The story was initially shared on Reddit by user /u/SoupSome2847. [Reddit Post: https://old.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/1ki2hse/an_aipowered_storytelling_project_to_help_save_a/]