New York is the applied AI capital of the world

There are nary amended proving grounds than the streets of New York City. It’s wherever dreams conscionable alloy and concrete, wherever visionaries marque their names and permission their marks connected the world. From being the archetypal superior of the fledgling federation to gathering the city’s archetypal subway to creating hip-hop, New York has sparked revolutions. Frank Sinatra sang it, Jay-Z rapped it: if you tin marque it here, you tin marque it anywhere.

And it’s existent for artificial intelligence, excessively — some a stand-alone manufacture and a instrumentality that volition interaction astir each different portion of our economy.

As the person of New York City’s Economic Development Corp., I’m throwing down the gauntlet: AI founders, researchers, investors — travel to New York. This is the eventual trial market. The biggest signifier for your large ideas. We are the applied AI superior of the world, wherever divers customers, from banks and instrumentality firms to retailers and probe hospitals, volition follow your innovations.

You’ll beryllium successful bully company. OpenAI, shaper of ChatGPT, conscionable chose the iconic Puck Building to motorboat its archetypal East Coast office. Google, Meta, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon person opened a combined 6 cardinal quadrate feet of abstraction successful New York successful caller years.

The Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub is applying AI to biotech astatine Columbia University, portion Meta’s main AI idiosyncratic leads NYU’s Computational Intelligence, Learning, Vision, and Robotics Lab. More than 40,000 AI-ready workers, 1,200 progressive investors, and much than 2,000 AI-startups — including 35 AI unicorns — already telephone New York home.

We’ve got the talent. Since 2021, 500,000 caller graduates person flocked to New York City and an adjacent fig are enrolled successful our world institutions. We’ve produced STEM Ph.D.s 3 times faster than the remainder of the country.

And the politician and tech leaders are doubling down connected the AI transformation. As announced successful a broad caller report, EDC is moving with manufacture advocates astatine Tech:NYC to motorboat a caller branding run to spotlight the city’s tech innovators, researchers and endowment and to basal up an “AI Advisory Council” to usher the equitable maturation of this ecosystem.

We’re launching an “AI Nexus” programme to supercharge AI adoption crossed each sectors. And metropolis agencies are piloting AI acquisition astatine our nationalist schools, nationalist universities, and nationalist libraries, to equip each New Yorker with the tools to thrive successful an AI-driven economy. All of this, gathering connected the mayor’s ambitious 2023 “Artificial Intelligence Action Plan,” which laid a instauration for liable and innovative usage of AI crossed metropolis government.

City leaders are besides creating the carnal infrastructure to enactment the revolution, from Civic Hall, an 85,000-square-foot tech grooming and lawsuit abstraction successful Union Square, to SPARC, a new, two-million-square-foot academic, wellness care, and biotech field connected the East Side of Manhattan.

And don’t hide the authorities government’s large bets. Last twelvemonth Gov. Hochul launched the “Empire AI” consortium with $400 cardinal successful nationalist and backstage backing to unafraid New York’s spot astatine the forefront of supercomputing infrastructure and innovation.

With the close investments and oversight, we’re assured that AI, similar the net and different large technological advances before, volition beryllium nett affirmative for the economy, creating galore much caller jobs than it disrupts.

Of course, determination are immoderate things that New York can’t offer. We don’t person Silicon Valley’s disconnected, sprawling campuses. We’re not a one-industry tech town, wherever everyone has identical résumés and identical interests.

But that’s New York’s advantage. This is simply a metropolis of contrasts, wherever you mightiness perceive Quechua and Fuzhounese portion riding the subway, oregon Haitian Creole and Yiddish portion waiting successful enactment astatine your country bodega. Our system is arsenic divers arsenic our population, with fast-growing beingness sciences, greenish economy, and tech industries intersecting our world-leading concern and taste sectors.

And determination is simply a large AI accidental successful each 1 of these industries. New York startups are already processing AI tools to assistance lawyers grind done terabytes of documents, covering retailers to minimize cloth waste, banks to contented micro-loans to tiny businesses. They’re optimizing powerfulness organisation crossed greenish grids, and processing tech that mightiness observe uncommon cancers earlier oregon synthesize life-saving drugs faster. AI companies present are augmenting existing jobs arsenic they make wholly caller ones.

If you privation to trial your tech successful the existent world, if you privation to use your AI to existent problems, there’s nary spot similar New York. The streets are your proving ground. The skyline, your regular inspiration.

If you’re acceptable to instrumentality connected the world, New York City is acceptable for you.

Kimball is president & CEO of the New York City Economic Development Corp.