August Monthly CASSUG Meeting

Greetings, data enthusiasts!

Our August meeting is scheduled for Monday, August 17th, at 5:30 pm! We will meet in person at: Troy Web Consulting, 135 Mohawk St, Cohoes, NY 12047.

Please RSVP if you are attending, so we can purchase an appropriate amount of food for everyone. Food is TBA and will be announced closer to the meeting date. For this meeting, we are having a session from Ben Harris discussing automated research agents.

Our meeting schedule is as follows:

5:30 PM: Food, soft drinks, and networking
6:15 PM: Chapter news and announcements
6:30 PM: Presentation

We usually wrap up between 7:30 PM and 8:00 PM. Here are the details for our session:

Ben Harris: The Rise of Automated Research Agents
This talk explores how automated research agents are transforming the way complex systems are analyzed in government and public infrastructure. Drawing from work in Municipal AI, it examines how agent-based systems can generate hypotheses, process large-scale data, and continuously iterate on insights far faster than traditional research methods.

The session highlights how these agents shift research from a manual, linear process into a scalable, adaptive system—unlocking new approaches to identifying inefficiencies, improving public services, and enabling more effective, data-driven decision-making. It also addresses the risks, limitations, and organizational changes required to deploy these systems responsibly in real-world environments.