About
Every office keeps a true file on one home, and nobody has the job of comparing them
ArtifexAI started on Cape Cod, when a town’s paper septic permits became a map in one weekend; the same idea now serves a town, a state agency and a federal department.
Cape Cod, where ArtifexAI started · aerial photograph, U.S. Geological Survey
Why
The files were written to be filed, not compared
An assessor’s card, a septic permit, a deed and the minutes of the meeting that decided a lot all tell the truth about one home, and every one of them was written to be filed well in its own office, never to be set beside the others. A consultant’s report answers one year’s question and stops, while the records in those offices keep changing after the report is shelved. The comparison is the job nobody holds, and that comparison is what ArtifexAI does, inside a copy the town keeps; a town’s size then has nothing to do with how much it can know about itself.
Where the work is
Three levels of government, the same kinds of records
The same kinds of records sit under all three, from a town’s assessor cards to the housing behind a military base.
Founders
The founders of ArtifexAI
Russ WilcoxChief executive · Co-founderIn the late 2010s, when nearly all language models were built for English, Russ Wilcox worked on models built for Norwegian, with Norway’s own knowledge and culture inside them. Since then he has briefed the Pentagon, the National Security Council, the State Department, the Senate and the UK House of Commons, and spoken three times at the World Economic Forum. He chairs policy for the American Society for AI. In Massachusetts he sat on Governor Healey’s AI task force and co-wrote the Digital Commonwealth Act; his nineteen years in data began in geophysics.
Bertie WrightChief technology officer · Co-founderBertie Wright runs product, engineering and every deployment, and the weekend a town’s paper septic permits became a map was his. He studied astrophysics at Boston University, with research on CERN’s NA62 experiment, and took a master’s in software engineering there; before ArtifexAI he built data platforms at Peapod Digital Labs, the e-commerce arm of Ahold Delhaize.
Advisors
Who advises the founders
Advisors to ArtifexAI are people who have sat where its buyers sit; among them a former head of security and technology at a federal law enforcement agency, a planner of housing for cities and for the military, the founder of a climate company who teaches at a university, the industry lead at a university real estate lab, and an investor in the company.
Principles
Four promises a town can hold ArtifexAI to
The town’s records never train anyone else’s AI
A town’s records serve that town, and they never leave it.
Every answer cites its record
One click opens the page behind any answer, and before a letter goes out or a list reaches a crew, the office checks the match itself with that page open.
Where the record is silent, so is the answer
An entry that fails an accuracy test is taken out rather than guessed at, and the question it would have answered is declined.
The town keeps everything
Both the records and the model built on them belong to the town.
Clients
What ArtifexAI’s clients have said
“Artifex AI consistently demonstrates unmatched expertise, work ethic, and professionalism, making them an invaluable partner in driving innovation within our environment.”Town Manager · Town of Chatham, Massachusetts
“Are you kidding me, I can use this.”Director of public works · a Massachusetts town
“What Artie accomplished in such a short period equated to thousands of hours of human document review and analysis.”Vice president · the firm that held a federal defense contract; Artie is the firm’s name for ArtifexAI
Recognition
Honors a stranger can check
Bring us one question; the answer is yours to keep.
A founder reads it and replies, and the first answer comes back from your town’s own records before any contract is signed; a firm or a nonprofit that works with towns has its own door on the Partners page.