Empire AI poised to improve AI research, access to AI tools for New Yorkers

Artificial intelligence systems are soon to be categorized and publicly available to New Yorkers thanks to a recently announced state consortium and recently issued state AI policy.

Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Monday the creation of a consortium named Empire AI, which aims to promote responsible research and development, create jobs, and unlock AI opportunities for New Yorker’s.

Over $400 million in public and private funding has been committed to create Empire AI, much of which will be used by the consortium to create and launch a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence computing center in Upstate New York for use by seven of the state’s leading institutions.

Diving into Empire AI

The consortium is comprised of the following institutions: Columbia, Cornell University, New York University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the State University of New York (SUNY), the City University of New York (CUNY), and the Simons Foundation.

By increasing collaboration between New York State’s world-class research institutions, Empire aims to bring about efficiencies of scale not able to be achieved by any single university, empower and attract qualified faculty and give rise to a wave of AI innovation, guided by an AI policy that Gov. Hochul’s office claims is the first of its kind to ensure agencies within state government understand how to responsibly harness AI technology.

“The policy establishes the principles and parameters by which state agencies can evaluate and adopt AI systems to better serve New Yorkers, including for example, helping to match people with jobs, more efficiently delivering benefits, exploring accessibility tools, and identifying and mitigating cyber threats,” the office said in a statement. “The policy will also ensure agencies remain vigilant about evaluating any risks of using AI systems and protecting against unwanted outcomes.”

The policy includes a section labeled “human oversight” which states that automated decisions made by state-utilized AI would not be finalized without first being reviewed by “appropriate staff.” All front-facing systems that benefit from the use of AI will need to disclose that to any members of the public that use them according to the policy’s guidelines.

It also aims to create a publicly available AI inventory that categorizes AI systems by their intended uses, and aims to identify and remediate “systemic, computational, and human biases” from the states' AI-assisted decision-making, an effort that many AI experts claim may not be easily achievable.

Empire AI would build on other recent commitments to New York’s tech workforce, which have brought hundreds of millions in investments from companies like Micron and TTM Technologies, bolstering semiconductor research and manufacturing statewide.

Cornell’s part to play

Krystyn Van Vilet, Cornell ‘s vice president for Research and innovation, said Tuesday the artificial intelligence computing center planned for Upstate New York will be a chance for AI researchers to collaborate with and learn from projects they may not have had access to otherwise.

“Those researchers have not been able to collaborate using this kind of computing power at this scale, so developing new models where the data might come from one university and the algorithm to turn that data into new understanding might come from another university,” she said. “It's easier for them to work together that way. There are different strengths that each of these research institutions and universities have, and this will allow those strengths to work together more easily.”

Van Vilet said that Cornell has been using artificial intelligence for decades, but only recently has the computing power of modern day hardware allowed for the ability to work with data at high speeds.

“This led to an increased sense of opportunity for the state to work together on how to make it possible to develop those shared resources for Cornell as well as other universities and research institutions in the state,” she said. “It's just a convergence of all of these different elements in an area where Cornell has been leading on the fundamentals behind the scenes for decades.”

Cornell researchers have found uses for artificial intelligence and machine learning to make advances in tackling some challenging societal problems, including urban design, optimization of transportation routes, analysis of the efficiency of energy systems, the creation of AI-monitoring for agriculture and expediting development of medicine using AI models, according to Van Vilet.

“If you want to design new medicines, artificial intelligence is increasingly powerful at predicting for that, not just in the general sense but for individual patients, which usually takes a lot of work,” she said. “You'll see those kinds of projects really accelerating through these resources that the State creates.”

How will AI impact governance statewide and locally?

The New York State Association of Counties (NYSAC) debriefed the potential impact of AI in county government during its winter meeting last week.

This winter meeting continued NYSAC’s discussion on AI which was raised during its fall seminar, looking at further avenues for deployment of the technology including using advanced chatbots, intuitive phone menu systems, improving search functionality and record keeping, and analyzing large quantities of public information.

NYSAC Executive Director Stephen Acquario noted that moving forward AI will be used in every area of society, but it still must be used as a tool humans can control – not the other way around.

“This technology is here and we as county leaders need to be prepared to leverage its potential and mitigate the risks associated with it,” said NYSAC President Daniel P. McCoy. “The potential for AI tools to provide game-changing insights in areas like budgeting and disaster response could revolutionize how we serve our communities.”

Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente Jr. has said that AI could reduce government costs, streamline infrastructure maintenance, optimize transportation, and maximize emergency response.

Tuesday, Van Vilet attested to this, and the power of AI in city or town governance.

“You can look back on years, decades of data and reflect on how the legal system within a city, or a state or a region works and how changes what the implications of different changes would be,” she said. “It's a very important tool for cities. Many cities right now are using these tools to think about electricity power water management, their resource use, and what changes to make through predictions based on data.”

Information from the Utica Observer-Dispatch was used in this article.

This article originally appeared on Ithaca Journal: Cornell to help with Empire AI