A shorter dispatch this month — a good deal of July's work was behind the scenes. Here's what's public: the newsletter has a permanent home, BDAIC made the news, our public data catalog keeps growing, we built a tool that turns a spec into a working app, and our AI literacy work is heading toward its first pilot.
What we shipped
You're reading it — BDAIC Monthly is live
Last month we said this newsletter was on the way. It's here. BDAIC Monthly now has a permanent public home at newsletter.bdaic.ai, with an archive of every past issue. Consider this issue No. 2 — thanks for reading along.
In the news — BDAIC on AI in higher ed
BDAIC Director Catherine Bass was featured in the Nashville Post's Innovation & Ideas 2026 package on how Nashville universities are approaching AI — where campuses draw boundaries, and where they put AI to work. The piece highlights BDAIC's human-in-the-loop philosophy:
"Where does the human come in — because the human has also got to always just be in the loop."
It also looks at how AI is showing up in Belmont classrooms — from syllabi and rubrics to simulations that help students train for rural healthcare settings — and how BDAIC helps students engage with AI thoughtfully and responsibly.
Read the original coverage in the Nashville Post → (subscription may be required)
More public data, now queryable by AI
Our public MCP endpoint now serves 44 open datasets — including the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) and the CDC's PLACES community-health data — every one queryable directly by an AI assistant.
Point an AI assistant at it and ask real questions of real data — read-only, authenticated, and rate-limited.
From a spec to a working app — end to end
Another thing we've been building: SpecWeave, a pipeline that turns a plain-language spec into a working, deployed application — planning, code, and deployment handled by AI, with a human signing off on the key steps.
This month it moved to a fully cloud-based build, so it can stand up a project without anyone's laptop in the loop. It's how we prototype tools quickly for the work we take on.
AI Literacy Framework — on track for its Fall pilot
Our campus-wide AI Literacy Framework, in partnership with Belmont's College of Business, is progressing toward its Level 1 pilot this Fall. The assignment and assessment tools we introduced last month are taking shape.
On the horizon
- A public landing site for bdaic.ai
- This newsletter, delivered to your inbox — subscribe link coming soon
- More open datasets, tools, and demos
Get involved
- Try the MCP server. Reach out for connection details and an access key.
- Partner with us. Nonprofits and organizations — we take on applied data & AI projects.
- Students. Interested in joining the lab? We'd love to hear from you.