AASHTO Journal - Artificial Intelligence Helps State DOTs Synthesize Information

Jim Anderson (above), founder and CEO of enterprise software firm Beacon, believes that one of the critical capabilities artificial intelligence or AI will bring to the state department of transportation community is the ability to synthesize large volumes of information faster and cheaper versus manual processes.

[Above photo by AASHTO]

Speaking at the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials 2026 Spring Meeting in Savannah, GA, Anderson said the sheer scale of investment in AI – some $2.5 trillion in 2026 alone – is going to create technological leaps that will be both large and highly unpredictable.

“That is just a staggering amount of money for capital investment,” he stressed. “How will it be compounded over the next 25 years? The reality is none of us, myself included, know exactly where this is going. That’s one of the things that makes it exciting, but also maybe a little bit scary.”

Yet perhaps one of the biggest benefits AI can provide state DOTs in the near future is the ability to “synthesize” large amounts of information, especially when it comes to the millions of documents state DOTs must manage.

“It’s not paperwork per se – it’s just piles of PDF documents. That’s where the problems are,” he explained. “You know, it’s 2026. We’re supposed to have flying cars by now, but instead, we are left to navigate through millions of PDF documents. And that’s difficult. That takes time. Yet this is where the institutional knowledge resides.”

All of these engineering plans, compliance documents, environmental studies, conference call transcripts, and myriads of other documents comprise what Anderson described as “unstructured data,” and it is this data that AI can not only help state DOTs manage but use more productively.

“The brutal reality is most of these millions of documents will never see human eyes again,” he said. “But they also present an opportunity right now. You know how to deal with numbers via spreadsheets and now, with AI, we can use large language models to effectively do math on words. Remember, those millions of documents represent a massive amount of stuff with knowledge and wisdom. That is the information that will help us build better infrastructure and maintain it better.”