B-Roll, Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Launches First Phase of Empire AI, Powering Critical Research for the Public Good Just Six Months After FY25 Budget

B-Roll, Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Launches First Phase of Empire AI, Powering Critical Research for the Public Good Just Six Months After FY25 Budget

Governor Kathy Hochul today announced New York's first-in-the-nation Empire AI Consortium will commence research this fall, just six months after it was included in the FY25 Enacted Budget. The Simons Foundation made a philanthropic contribution of initial computing power and expert staffing, allowing Empire AI to jumpstart their research. Housed at the University at Buffalo, this initial phase of Empire AI represents some of the most robust computing power in the nation. On behalf of the Consortium, the University at Buffalo has also launched a request for proposals to advance the permanent home of the full-scale state-of-the-art artificial intelligence computing center.

B-ROLL: The event is available to stream b-roll on YouTube here and TV quality b-roll is available here (h.264, mp4).

VIDEO: The event is available to stream the event on YouTube here and TV quality video of the event 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:

Great to be back - sleep in my old bed. It's getting a little dusty in the house, but we were here last night to celebrate something else that I'm so proud of and that is to announce the $5 million winners of The 43 North competition which has put New York State, and particularly Buffalo, on the map as the place where startups begin.

And so, that was last night. To be able to be here today, it's just a continuation of the incredible, incredible transformation of not just what's happening here in Buffalo, but truly the State of New York, and I could not be prouder. So, you have to ask, "Why are we here today?" Because here in New York, we don't wait for destiny, we create our own, and I'm here today to declare that the destiny that we have created is found in the room next door.

Through there, there is a large black box looking structure, kind of like that. To some, it may just look like a tangle of wires and dark trays with blinking lights, but it's nothing short of a revolution in the way we learn and work and interact with each other. And, in fact, if you think about it, it's like a heart beating in a body with the cadence of advancement, and pumping technology and future through its veins.

Now, we don't just do any supercomputer here in Buffalo. It's the next generation of supercomputer, the most cutting edge technology that exists anywhere out there. So, join me on this journey as we go, boldly, where AI in New York has never gone before. And I want to acknowledge the people who make the magic happen - so many people, but you're going to listen to them all because they all deserve to be recognized.

I want to first of all acknowledge my Commissioner of Empire State Development, Hope Knight, who is also the President. Where's Hope? Right there in the front row. Hope, thank you. My hometown commissioner; a civil service who's transforming civil service - wanting more people to become public servants. Thank you, Tim Hogues- a buffalo resident as well.

Mayor Byron Brown will be joining us shortly, but the Mayor and I are leaving here to go over to the, formerly known as, The Perry Street Project. So, as if you drove into Buffalo for basically your entire life, you saw the degradation of public housing in our community that was really left there haunting us for generations.

Everybody saw that this had once been a place people lived in the fifties, sixties, seventies, and then after time it was abandoned, and broken windows, and just the specter of people still living in that midst. When I became Governor, I said, "That's coming down." My friends, it is down. We're rebuilding a whole new community there, so I'm looking forward to going right past that on my way back out to the airport and saying, "Yes, great things are happening here."

So, I'm looking forward to joining the Mayor over there as well. Our elected officials from the State have been recognized. They're great champions of this project, and I thank them because I bring them a lot of ideas. You love them all, right?

Yeah, there we go. I'm going to quote you on that in a couple months. When you think about it, it's a radical idea - it's a large investment of State dollars to do something that has not been done before. But, they're also the believers - especially our representatives that we have here from Western New York who saw the great potential, especially when I said, "Let's house it at the University of Buffalo." I think I had you at hello then, right? Okay, I thought so.

And, thinking of University of Buffalo, Satish Tripathi has been a friend and an ally for such a long time, and his leadership is exemplary, and I know he's continuing to lead this great institution, one of our flagships, here in the State of New York - UB and Stony Brook: Two institutions that we are immensely proud of and I want to thank President Satish as well.

Someone you need to get to know better, and that is Marilyn Simons. She would be here with her husband, Jim, but we lost him a short time ago. The two of them are a powerhouse couple and have been, and using their talents, and resources and the genius behind what they have done as a couple - also being able to help fund an initiative like this through the Simons Foundation.

Marilyn, we've become good friends over the years. We terribly miss Jim, but your presence here today and your willingness to make this happen, way in advance of when we anticipated it would be occurring at the UB Main Campus - this is something I will never take for granted. Let's give a special round of applause to Marilyn.

Our Chancellor, John King - we were together at UAlbany yesterday talking about supercomputers and innovation there as well. So, all across what we call the "Innovation Corridor" - It used to be called the Erie Canal Corridor, it still is, but it's also the "Erie Canal Innovation Corridor" - from here all the way to Albany, and we did some great things there yesterday. Let's give another round of applause to John King, our Chancellor.

Dr. Robert Harrison, who's going to be heading up this operation - he's an Interim Director - the Executive Director of Empire AI, and I want to thank him for being the first. The bar is held high. I have very high expectations. I'll be checking in on everything and the progress because that's who I am. We wouldn't put it in your hands if we didn't think you could make this be accomplished.

Tom Secunda - you don't know him, perhaps, but he is the person who exactly one year ago planted this idea that, "Wouldn't it be amazing 'if'," and if someone says that to me, you've got my attention. And he laid out the vision for this. And again, he's one of the founders of Bloomberg LLP, which is an extraordinary global operation. So, you know he has success and knows how to find ideas that work. But his engagement in this has been transformative. It brought the people together who otherwise would not have coalesced around an idea like this. And so, you'll be hearing from Tom in a few minutes as well. But, so grateful to him for helping us literally get to this place today. Let's give him a round of applause as well.

New York has been the home of industrial revolutions for generations. You know, we talked about how I wish we all had time to take a tour, but those of you who can go out and see the power facility in Lewiston, you can go through the visitor center and you see Tesla. Not the cars, but Nikolai Tesla, debating with Thomas Edison on the value of AC current versus DC current. They have this exchange as holograms. It's quite fascinating. And those are the debates that were going on right in our community back at a time when people just thought, "You're going to harness hydroelectric power - Niagara Falls - and power the industrial revolution here in Western New York." You know what? It happened.

Think about the audacity of those who said, "Let's build a canal across the entire State of New York. The largest Canal in the world." And they did this. They did this 200 years ago. We will celebrate that next year, and that's why Buffalo will be the site of the World Canal Congress where thousands of people will come and see what still is viewed as an engineering marvel here in our own State of New York.

So, we build on this legacy of crazy ideas that end up being wildly successful, and as a result, we were able to. This is how you power the resurgence of a region - you create something out of nothing. New York City was a nice little community before the Erie Canal. It was not the economic, global, commercial powerhouse that it is today at all, because they needed that way to get products out to the markets, and get them out to the Midwest and literally explode the Midwest after we are able to start having linkages there through the Erie Canal.

You don't just spread commerce across the world, but you also spread knowledge across the world, and sometimes it's easier to visualize transformation when you think about electrifying buildings. First electrified city in the world, City of Lights, Buffalo. Or if you're pouring concrete, the stadium. You can say, "That's going to be a stadium someday." We're going to have the Buffalo Bills playing there in two years. Everybody hear that? Two years, no delays. Okay?

But today, we're doing something. I want to tell you and persuade you that this is just as bold, and brave and audacious as all those challenges that came before that we overcame. This investment, $400 million combined with state and philanthropic partners, business people who believe as well as our universities. This is how we talk about putting AI to work for people. And this is how we're also accelerating the rebirth of manufacturing in the State of New York. And I'll be talking about that a lot because something is happening.

You may not know it. We are creating more manufacturing jobs than have in my last three years as Governor, than at any time in recent memory. And it's not all the old steel that my grandpa and my dad made down at the Bethlehem Steel Plant. It is microchips, and it is the energy and the technology that is used that's going to be spread across the world.

So, we are now following in the footsteps of those great innovators, the people of great ideas, the people of great enthusiasm, as Teddy Roosevelt would like to say. And no one could have anticipated achieving so much in such little time. I'm actually stunned by the speed at which this has happened. It was just one year ago, as I mentioned, that Tom and I had the conversation. It was three months later, we announced this in our State of the State after countless meetings like, what is this actually going to look like? How will it work? And what we're doing with Empire AI is unprecedented.

Now, some of these supercomputers already exist in the United States. I didn't say we're the first in the country. But those are in the hands of private companies. That's the difference. OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, they have these. But, imagine what good could be done if you take this power and put it in academia and attract the brightest people in the country - if not the world - to come to our State, to have access to this, to contemplate and imagine and innovate and create solutions to society's problems that up until now have been unsolvable. That's what I'm expecting. A little bold, but that's how we roll. And if we put this in the hands of the best academic minds, it's exactly what I wanted to see happen.

And so, this effort is for the public good. Brilliant students and faculty will come here. Not just at the University of Buffalo. Many will come, Dr. Satish, don't worry. Where are you? They're coming, don't worry. But every SUNY school, every CUNY school, and our partners like Cornell, Columbia, NYU, RPI, Flatiron, the Simons organization - so, all of our partners who have contributed to this have been given a very clear directive to find solutions to society's problems.

So, we can be talking about tackling food insecurity, something that is very real in a prosperous State like New York. That's not acceptable to me. Help us continue to develop therapies and treatments for cancer. We've come a long way. We're blessed to have Roswell right down the street, but there's so much more that needs to be done because we're still losing New Yorkers and others to this deadly disease.

How about preparing for the next hurricane? And we still, in New York City in Downstate, we're still seared by the knowledge of the power of Hurricane Sandy. Those who lived on Long Island, and Manhattan and Staten Island, just still when you say hurricanes, they still have that PTSD from what happened - shocking flooding the subways of New York, damaging bridges we're still repairing today.

Or, you talk about what happened with Milton. Hey, it didn't seem like that was really well predicted. We knew it was going to hit Florida, but I don't think the East Coast was ready for it. I don't think the exact trajectory was accurate, and people were not ready, necessarily.

So, this is what we're talking about. Also, how we harness all kinds of energies right now. But then what we're going to do here today, let's use the first, and there's so many people want to use this - the list is long, everybody wants a piece of this, but we're going to be, first of all, talking about cybersecurity, and that'll be one of the first projects here because we are all so vulnerable.

As individuals, your credit cards, your banking online, all the way to our governments, and our national security is at risk of being compromised because of foreign actors, especially as we get closer to an election, which is going to determine the trajectory of our nation.

This is what's at risk out there, but I'm feeling very proud that these are the conversations that are going to be happening in this building and across the State using this power. We're going to make a real difference for New Yorkers. Again, $275 million from the State. Grateful to my partners there. $125 million from university and philanthropic partners like the Simons Foundation and others who have been so generous with this project.

We're going to continue. And people say, "How did we get here so quickly?" I'll wrap up with this. Those of you who know me, rather impatient, right? I want it done. But also, I have also seen thousands and thousands of good ideas, great ideas, die in reports that sit on shelves or in conference rooms where they're debated to death.

And that could have easily happened with something like this. Wow, that's pretty radical. You better think about this, all the other elements and pros and cons and all the aspects and who's involved. That could be exactly what we are and it would be a normal course of events, right?

But I agree with Teddy Roosevelt, who was sworn in just walking distance from here - the Teddy Roosevelt Inaugural Site. I'm always promoting visitors from out of town to come see everything we have here. It's literally walking distance. He said, "You have to be in the arena to know the triumph of high achievement, not on the sidelines with the timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

I've been in that arena a long time. Yes, you get bloodied and marred, as you say, "But you'll never know the triumph of high achievement if you don't enter that arena." My friends, we're not only in the arena. We built the arena. This is our arena. And so, we're going to win. We're going to fight.

Again, with that I want to introduce Marilyn Simons. Marilyn Simons has been an extraordinary leader. She is a household name with Stony Brook. That's where you first met Jim at Stony Brook. She's got a great story to tell. It's a love story that endured for decades and decades. It has been a treasure to get to know them.

And to know that we're going to continue this effort because of good people stepping up at a time when we need them. And I am forever grateful to you, and I want to thank you and all the others involved, and I want to thank you as we announce our Stony Brook professor, Dr. Robert Harrison, who will be the Interim Director. He'll be announcing that today.

And also that we've officially incorporated this as a nonprofit organization. We are a board of directors. I'm just telling you, there's a lot behind this, but we have our leaders of all the institutions I mentioned, and Tom Secunda is Chair, so I feel very confident of that.

And we're going to keep making sure that we reach these milestones as soon as possible. So, I'm excited, I'm energized, and let's fight in the arena to make sure we win and dominate the rest of the world. That's what we're going to do here in Buffalo, across the State of New York. Marilyn Simons, please come up.

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