Never in his wildest dreams could Orland Park’s first mayor – John Humphrey – imagine he would have his name honored on an AI chatbot.
Heck, when Humphrey was growing up in Orland Park in the 1800s, he took a trip to California.
By wagon train.
Computers, smart phones, and artificial intelligence were definitely not a part of the lexicon in Humphrey’s lifetime.
But in 2026, the village unveiled an AI virtual assistant in late August and Tad Spencer, director of information technology for the village, gave a rundown on the bot at the Sept. 9 Committee of the Whole meeting.
“It is an AI-driven chatbot that will provide faster, more accessible and trusted information,” Spencer said. “It is grounded information only based on what we provide it.
“It is not going to be able to access general internet information. It does not provide information outside of what we tell it to do.”
Residents have access to it two ways – via the village’s website at orlandpark.org and by calling the village’s main number at 708-403-6100.
Spencer said that the village can track information on what residents are interested in based on their inquiries to the bot.
He said the most web interest is parks and recreation while calls are more about permits and licensing and general questions.
“We get reports on a daily basis on what’s being asked and what our residents are interested in,” Spencer said. “We review this with the vendor on a monthly basis to make sure that we are providing the information that is needed.
“We can also see when people are asking. Even at 11 p.m. or 3 a.m., people are asking Humphrey questions. So, when the village is not open, they are still able to get answers.”
Spencer said Humphrey is available in 75 languages.
In this world of hacking and misinformation, Spencer said that Humphrey is only going to use information that the village is going to supply it.
“Someone already tried to highjack it to provide wrong information,” Spencer said. “But the bot would not let it do that.”
“I appreciate that someone has tried to hack it,” Mayor James Dodge said, referring to the successful safeguards Humphrey has.
Dodge said that this will be an efficient way for residents to get the right information and to talk to the right people quicker.
“I wanted to make sure that when people call the village, they didn’t get trapped in an old-school phone system,” Dodge said. “We are asking the residents to understand how we are structured and how we allocate work so when we have an inbound request for service or a question – let this thing figure out how to put them into a better place pretty quickly.”
