Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Launches AI and the Future of Work Advisory Council to Steer State Response to Impacts of New Technologies on Workers[...]

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul launched the FutureWorks Commission to advise on policy and private sector interventions which protect the economic security of workers while harnessing the economic benefits of AI. This blue ribbon Commission will be composed of nation-leading experts, workers' advocates, and business leaders, and will be charged with advising Governor Hochul on how to navigate the AI transition, so that the benefits of AI can be shared among New York's families, workers, and small businesses - not just large corporations. .

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor's Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

 Good morning, everyone. First of all, thank you for creating the opportunity for me to get reacquainted with someone who calls himself my husband. I don't get a chance to see him much. We've been married 42 years, but if you actually calculate the time together, we're probably about 18 years. But thank you all for being here today. I always look forward to this event. And to Steven and everyone at ABNY, thank you for carrying on the fight after many decades and giving us an organization that people can believe in. And to everyone who's part of it - and I cannot ever say the word ABNY without mentioning Bill Rudin and his family and thank them for their early leadership and forward thinking that brought us here today.

A lot of elected officials, but a special shout out to our Speaker, Julie Menin, once again, and our Manhattan Borough President, Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who shows up at all my events now that he's not a senator up in Albany, he's able to come to everything. And also my colleagues in government, I want to give a special shout out to my extraordinary leadership team. I have assembled the best of the best in all those - true public servants who lift me up every day and I want to give a special acknowledgement to Karen Persichilli Keogh, who's the Secretary of the Governor, and my entire team that's here today.

As I said, it's great to see everyone here at ABNY. As I was on my way here, I was thinking about just how the world has changed so dramatically since I first addressed you. You may not remember, but I was a brand new Governor in December of 2022. If you recall, it was a time of tremendous upheaval and uncertainty. Businesses suffered lockdowns and restrictions, job losses were rampant, inflation reared its ugly head, crime was way up, office buildings were empty. This city felt like a ghost town, and our transit system was careening off a fiscal cliff, and that threatened the very lifeblood of this city. I'm so proud to say, working alongside many of you, that we pulled New York back from the abyss.

I don't need to tell you there's a whole lot more life in Midtown, more than anyone thought possible. There's a resurgence in private sector jobs, more than we had before the pandemic, new major investments in technology and advanced manufacturing, and this city leads the nation in return to work. We're a top destination for recent college graduates, number one in the nation for office conversions into housing after I repealed a 60-year-old law that stood in the way. Tourism has returned, our hotels are full, and we're about to welcome the world as we host the FIFA World Cup Finals this summer and Sail250, commemorating the birth of our great nation.

We've done all this work to get New York where it is today, and it's good, it's positive, except for one thing. This recovery has not benefited all New Yorkers equally. Middle and working class people struggle to get by - from small business owners in the Bronx to healthcare workers in Queens. I hear the frustration, anger everywhere I go. People tell me they're working harder than ever, but still falling behind, or it feels like the system is rigged against honest, hardworking people.

Many of us in this room grew up believing if you worked hard, you played by the rules, got an education, a good job was more than possible, it was inevitable. But today, even with a college education, doesn't guarantee you'll get a job. And just last week a Bloomberg report showed the job market for graduates who flocked to New York is now cratering. The number of entry level jobs in the city fell 37 percent in just two years, 2022 and 2024. Now, for these young people, it feels like the rug has been pulled out from under them. And guess what? Now they're burdened with student debt, preparing for a job that no longer exists.

So here's what I worry about - and it should concern all of us - when the hopes of our young people are dashed, it can destabilize an entire community. And it's not just recent college grads who've had the door of opportunity slammed in their face, families are feeling it too. Millions of middle-class families just can't get their heads above water. Housing, childcare, groceries, utilities, car insurance, medical bills are all soaring, and just when you thought it couldn't get any worse in the three weeks since the United States launched a military campaign against Iran, the average price of gas in New York is up 21 percent, up 62 cents per gallon.

Remember when owning a home was once considered a true measure of success? It is more out of reach than ever before. Not long ago, the average age of a first time home buyer was 30-years-old. I think Bill and I were about 30 when we got our first home. Now it's middle-aged, 40. I know 40-year-olds don't want to be called middle-aged. I get it, but you are. People feel left behind. Okay did I just insult half the room? Hey, I haven't seen middle age in a long time, okay? So you're not going to get any sympathy from me. But, you know, listen, people also not getting the house, they see a record stock market and big tax cuts out of Washington for the wealthiest, and then they say, "What happened? What about my American dream?" And I believe as a society, if we ignore those powerful emotions and frustrations, we do so at our own peril, and that's why I've devoted so much of my energy and political capital, addressing that sense that people have that no one is listening or cares, and with a laser focus on affordability.

Now I have to overcome NIMBYism in this state, which has stifled our ambition to build. We're finally now saying yes to housing so we can start driving down rents. I'm taking on entrenched interest to drive down one of the highest auto insurance rates in the nation, fulfilling my longtime commitment to universal child care while working with the Mayor to find a path to universal child care for every single two-year-old in this city. Now - yes, we've got some parents in the room - smart business owners know that childcare is a value proposition for them. Now think about it, if you're an employer competing for young talent that can go anywhere in the country, but if you're able to say New York City, New York State have universal child care that'll save your family $20,000 to $40,000 per year per child, my bet is that New York City employers win out every time. With that kind of pro-family work environment, it sends a clear message to moms and dads - we hear you, we know what you're up against, and we want you to succeed.

What I'm fighting for is a New York that works for everyone, a New York that not only empathizes what everyone's up against, but takes action like directing the State of New York, on our own, to absorb a $7 billion unemployment burden on our small businesses, restoring tax breaks to those that were killed to allow for more affordable housing to be built. And in this budget, I'm fighting to change the seeker laws that are stymieing growth. And given that our renewable energy policies, our strategy, has been kicked in the teeth by Donald Trump, who, by the way, is literally paying off companies to cancel offshore wind contracts, I have to focus on an all-of-the-above strategy for energy, including the most ambitious nuclear energy strategy in the entire country. And we have demonstrated an intense focus on both retaining, and attracting new businesses and jobs, and I hope you all share my intense pride that we landed the largest private sector investment in American history with Micron, 50,000 jobs, $100 billion, semiconductors outside of Syracuse. In fact, I woke up this morning, I read the news from all across the state and I saw pictures of their construction site. I was so happy. And the news that Micron's profits have tripled since the last quarter and their CEO is saying their memory chips are at the center of the AI revolution. This is an enormous opportunity for New York, and I fought so hard to secure this.

At the same time, we also are home to the nation's largest public sector investment, the Gateway Tunnel, with over 10,000 good paying jobs, and yet this critically important project - Donald Trump tried to kill that too, and I had to fight hard to get it back just like I had to fight, as you heard from Steven, over congestion pricing, the Second Avenue Subway, counter-terrorism money all earmarked for New York. And now, my latest fight is getting the $13.5 billion that I say New York families overpaid with Donald Trump's illegal tariff scheme. I want that money back in our pockets too.

So, I'm not afraid of a fight. As I told a reporter on St. Patrick's Day asking me about all this, I said, "I'm Irish. We like to fight." But isn't that New York's calling card? We all do. We're tough, we're shrewd. We never backed down. Call it moxie - the city has it in spades and we're going to need it more than ever before. And that's why I want to turn now for the next few minutes to talk about threats, but also the opportunities that I see facing us in the short term and in the long term.

Now we have entered a period of great upheaval, a seismic shift unlike anything we've seen since the Industrial Revolution - this time driven by a newer technology, artificial intelligence. Now, make no mistake: New York will embrace the best that AI has to offer in terms of efficiency and innovation, but we also have to reckon with the ways that it's disrupting the foundations of our society.

As I mentioned before, generations have long relied on a tried and true path to success: education, good jobs - all of a sudden, you're on the pathway to the middle class and beyond. I know, that's my own family story rising up from its pretty tough circumstances. And yet, AI threatens to make that American rite of passage obsolete. Across the board, the AI revolution is hitting workers like an earthquake, squeezing more efficiency out of senior staff, forcing mid-level workers to find new jobs and leaving entry-level workers out in the cold. Just this Tuesday, I sat with some young tech workers whose jobs were recently eliminated by AI - they know that because that's what their boss said.

They were understandably frustrated and demoralized. Now, they had played it safe. They studied coding and computer science like everybody told them to do, and they entered once secure fields. They became project managers, graphic designers. Some even moved to New York from the Midwest; others came here on work visas from other countries. All of them with big dreams, and now those dreams are deferred. They're seeing an almost nonstop wave of layoffs, layoffs that their executives blame on AI even when the company was posting record profits.

What it's doing is creating a have and have not divide, a divide between the C-suites and the workers as they're seeing full-time jobs replaced by contract work with no benefits. They're seeing AI change our workforce to become more homogenous than diverse - once our great strength - and they're now seeing the firsthand invisible cost of AI, because of all its efficiency and innovation, we now know that AI can never replace human empathy and emotion. One recently laid off graphic designer told me she feels even if she finds another job, she's just catching the last train because the opportunities are rapidly evaporating - and she has a decade of experience.

It's even harder for someone just starting out, but it's not just our tech workers, it's people working in administration, health care, marketing, finance - almost no line of work is immune. And recent studies say that women make up 86 percent of the jobs most vulnerable to AI losses. And polls show that young voters share a widely held fear of a white collar wipe out and massive job losses. And they don't believe government will help, but I intend to prove them wrong. We cannot freeze our economy in amber and pretend that AI isn't here to stay. But if we ignore what's happening with the job placement due to AI, our efforts to put more money back in New Yorker's pockets and their wallets won't have much impact when the wallet is already completely empty because there has been no job when a job disappears.

But think about it, two things can be true at the same time: AI can and must be a force for good. At the same time, it could literally eliminate many entry and mid-level jobs that are the pathway to the middle class and beyond. If that occurs, we can have an economic and societal crisis beyond anything our generations have witnessed. So when people feel the economy's not working for them, that there's no way to get ahead, that's when they become susceptible to empty promises of politicians like Donald Trump. But here's the truth: Donald Trump isn't going to solve this - that is, unless there's a way to make money off of it - but we must seize this moment.

New Yorkers have to do what we've always done before - that is stand up and lead. I'm calling on electeds and business and civic leaders to join me in tackling these challenges head on because I believe we can harness the best that AI has to offer while taking steps to not let AI destabilize our economy, our workers and our way of life. We're not naive. We understand the inevitability that some jobs may be eliminated by AI - some already have. In the world I grew up in in Buffalo, New York - Go Bills, there's always next year, always next year - but foreign competition and automation eliminated the good paying blue collar jobs of the steel plant that my grandpa and my dad worked at. And sadly, the shell-shocked, displaced workers felt they were literally abandoned by their government. This time, we cannot let that happen.

Employers today and in the future will expect their employees to have a baseline of AI proficiency. So starting now, let's arm our workers and our students with the knowledge and credentials to help them thrive in this new world. My ambition is for New York to lead the nation in AI innovation, coupled with a workforce that's ready to use their AI to their advantage and not be victims of it. Here's what we're doing already: Free community college for adults pursuing careers in high demand fields where you need a human touch - nursing, health care, manufacturing. We're also launching a new program to train and place underrepresented college students in AI-enabled careers and providing AI training for small business owners and entrepreneurs so they can take advantage of this. Plus, at the state level, we're upskilling 100,000 state employees in responsible AI use and giving them access to approved generative AI models.

Let me be clear: We're not replacing workers, we're arming them to thrive in an AI driven economy. And if our workforce is the gold standard in terms of AI readiness, New York will be the first place that AI companies consider when they start setting up shop. We want them creating jobs instead of eliminating them, and I believe New York can be an engine of AI, job creation, and I commit to working toward that goal. But if New York wants to be the go-to destination for the AI firms of the future, we have to be clear-eyed about the downsides as well, including those massive data centers. We get it, they're critical for AI firms, but they consume enormous amounts of energy.

So if we let these energy guzzling data centers proliferate, they will put a strain on our already strained power grid and drive up utility costs. So our proposal is simple: If companies want to build massive data centers in our state, they have to either create their own power, which is possible, or contribute more to New York's energy infrastructure. Innovation should not shift the costs on working families and their utility bills. It should be a powerful tool for public good, and that's why, that's why, I partnered with the state's leading private and public institutions to create Empire AI. Have you heard of it? Look it up. Look it up. This is extraordinary.

We have created the most powerful supercomputer in the nation, harnessed for public good, making it available to our research institutions, our colleges, universities only in New York - no other state has it. And we're delivering on my vision to have accelerated breakthroughs in medicine, climate science, cybersecurity, and we're making sure the next generation of AI is developed responsibly and transparently right here in New York.

In my 2024 State of the State, I said - as I announced Empire AI - I declared whoever owns AI owns the future. Advances are happening fast, and like I said, I want those innovations made right here in the great state of New York - not Ohio, not California, not China, not Europe. Now no one can predict exactly how artificial intelligence really will reshape our world - ask three different experts, you'll get five different opinions - but the stakes are just too high to leave it to chance.

And if AI is destined to reconfigure the global economy, New York must be on the front lines. And that's why today, I'm launching the FutureWorks Commission, convening leaders in business, technology, labor, academia and government to help us understand the risks and opportunities ahead. It'll have an ambitious agenda to study how AI is shaping jobs and industries, track both the worst disruptions and the most promising, find the new opportunities for workers and recommend policies to ensure New Yorkers benefit from the AI transformation, instead of getting shut out. You can applaud to that.

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Yeah. New York has always been the place where seemingly unsolvable challenges get solved. 55 years ago, when the city had its back up against the wall, the founders of ABNY came together guided by this basic principle: If you do well in New York, you have an obligation to give back to New York. And back then when the naysayers would have you believe New York City was dead and buried, that urban America was a failed experiment and New York City's troubles just proved that point, and yet the founders of ABNY stood up and said "No. Not on our watch." We need that same mindset now because the challenges I discussed today demand our attention just as the fiscal crisis of the seventies did back then.

I'll end with my vision for New York. With the help of the smart people in this room, we can safeguard workers so they're not left behind by AI. We can build an economy that is pro-worker and pro-innovation. We can build a New York that is more affordable, family friendly, and a place where businesses want to invest and workers can pursue their dreams - and be a center of gravity for the future of AI and the envy of this country and the world even more than we already are. And working with a real sense of purpose, we can define and create a future that'll have prosperity for everyone, everyone to share in. Thank you very much.

Contact the Governor's Press Office