Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Delivers Remarks at The University at Albany to Unveil Powerful AI Supercomputer

Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Delivers Remarks at The University at Albany to Unveil Powerful AI Supercomputer

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul delivered remarks at the University at Albany to unveil the powerful AI supercomputer. In April 2022, Governor Hochul's enacted Budget awarded $75 million to UAlbany: Half of that funding would go towards completing the University's new downtown engineering building, now known as CNSE Downtown, and the other half toward expanding UAlbany's AI supercomputing capacity. UAlbany launched the Center for Emerging Artificial Intelligence Systems in collaboration with IBM. Through a $20M joint investment, the new center is promoting additional AI capacity to the campus. This includes access to AI-optimized cloud-based IBM GPU supercomputing resources and an on-campus prototype system employing IBM's new Artificial Intelligence Unit chip.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of the Governor's remarks is available here.

PHOTOS of the event will be available on the Governor's Flickr page.

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

Thank you. The world is in the midst of one of the most important races in human history. It's a race for knowledge, wealth, prosperity and power. The race to become the global leader in AI will be one of the defining competitions of our lifetimes as we seek to unlock and control technology that could transform the future that we're heading into.

And today as we unveil a new supercomputer - the likes of which we could not have even imagined just a few short years ago - right here at the University of Albany, I have so many people to say thank you to. Because of them, New York is in that race and we're leading that race. So, do not underestimate the power of making decisions, and say, "We will compete, we will win," and that's part of why we're here today. We'll set the pace for innovation; for ambition and progress throughout our country.

So, I want to thank some individuals. Dr. Havidán Rodriguez - this is here for a reason. You realize the full potential of the assets you already have at this extraordinary institution and how they can be harnessed to go where no man or woman has gone before. But leadership matters and I thank you for leading this incredible initiative. Let's give our great President of UAlbany a round of applause: Dr. Havidán Rodriguez.

Similar to be said about Chancellor John King. I wanted someone who was a visionary. Yes, he has vast operations to oversee as a practitioner on the operations side, but I also wanted people in positions like this who could see way down the road, who could look into the future and get a snapshot of what it could look like if we used the power of SUNY, and you have unleashed that power, Chancellor King, and I want to thank you for your leadership as well. Let's give him a round of applause.

The resources we bring to this come from a number of sources: one is our Budget Director, Blake Washington, who's here. So you ought to be nice to Blake. But also our Legislature. Our partners in the Legislature. The Chair of the Higher Education Committee is right here in Albany - Assemblymember Pat Fahy - and she has realized the incredible power of this institution, and I want to thank her for helping champion this through the Legislature. Let's give a round of applause to Assemblymember Pat Fahy.

Assemblymember, John McDonald, is always there with his hand out for more money for his district as well. Alright, John, I'm kind of enjoying this time when we're not in Budget. But you have great leaders here and never underestimate the power of the people that you select to serve you in state government and how that's being used for public good here.

A mayor who has been a friend a long time, Mayor Kathy Sheehan. You've been at the forefront of a lot of battles as well, but you guide this city and this region with your commitment to true public service, because you know what it's all about. And I want to thank our mayor for being here as well for many great announcements.

John Coyne, NVIDIA Higher Education Research, thank you. And Kesh - I'm going to say it wrong but I'm going to try - Kesavadas, is that close enough? I've got a name that has been mangled ever since I've been married, 40 years. Would have been easier to keep the maiden name, but I didn't.

But I want to thank everyone here and all the students here. I want to thank the students and the researchers and the practitioners and Ph.D. candidates and others who are here today. And our other partners in government, RPI, what an extraordinary organization to be able to come together and bring all that together in this place.

And as I said, we're competitive here in New York. It's sort of in our DNA. And every other state in the nation is waking up and thinking they're behind. Everyone wants to be the leader in AI development. But I said in my State of the State less than a year ago - less than a year ago - that whoever dominates the AI industry will dominate the next chapter of human history.

And we know why superpowers like China are working overtime to dominate and build the next generation of supercomputers capable of making mass technological strides.

But here in the United States, those supercomputers also exist. And until today, they had been in the hands of private companies: OpenAI, Google, Microsoft. Imagine all the good that can be done when that same power is in the hands of institutions like University at Albany, dedicated to the public good - the most driven academic minds, as I mentioned, our researchers and Ph.D. candidates.

And their objective is not to make money off of this, their objective is to foster progress for mankind, womankind, and to innovate, to be creative, to learn and improve society and the human condition. If we can solve problems that are affecting people right now, if we can use this as that tool, what an extraordinary place we will be.

So in April of 2022, we awarded the $75 million to the University at Albany. And half of those funds were to complete CNSE Downtown and the other half was to go toward [AI] programming. And people may have questioned, "Why would you put so much money into programming?" Because it led to where we are here today. And today we reap the rewards of that investment.

And I'm going to get a little bit technical for a second: it's an NVIDIA DGX system with 24 AI100 nodes. You all know what that means? We are in a classroom, right? I get to quiz them. But that's what we have here. Talk to your geek friends. Look it up. They will be very impressed. Try to repeat that again.

It has 192 graphic processing units. Maybe you will appreciate this - three miles of fiber-optic cabling, and that is why we can do vastly complex calculations. And the research will be just extraordinary and solve problems in hours that would have taken days before. Look at the efficiency of that statement alone, what we can do so much more. It doesn't mean you get the rest of the week off. It means that you'll be working. You will be even more productive in finding solutions because we have urgency behind what we're doing here today.

But when this starts running - and you heard from Dr. Rodriguez about some of the incredible potential uses, and - we're all thinking about what is happening in Florida. I have four family members who's houses took direct hits and are, you know, having problems right now. And to be able to forecast that - I mean, you saw this all across the states and the country. Like, where is it going? Is it going up here? Is it going there? They couldn't even tell it was going to hit the other side of Florida with such ferocity, so people were not ready for that. Imagine if that modeling was accurate. The people would have the early warning systems, they can evacuate a lot earlier, board up the buildings, get the gas in the tank. All those issues that are real today can be solved with what we're doing here.

That's why I want to break it down to what we can understand. That's called improving people's lives. And as you heard from Dr. Rodriguez, saving people's lives as well. And developing vaccines. I mean, look how we survived the pandemic because of the rapid development of vaccines. But we still had to wait a long time in our minds - it was long. This normally would have taken years. So in the industry's mind, it was done in no time at all. But if you're someone who's desperately afraid of contracting COVID and its deadly impacts at that time, you want that vaccine immediately, right? And that's what we're also focusing on is how we can make real differences in people's lives.

So, we also announced our Empire AI initiative. It's a $400 million public private consortium designed to do what we're doing here: build supercomputers. Again, another area where SUNY is stepping up. This will be housed at the University of Buffalo. And all it is, is advancing the same goals. So when other states are looking, they're saying, "Oh my gosh, they're doing it at UAlbany. Oh, they're actually doing it at Buffalo now. They're so far ahead of us." You all should just surrender if you're from another state because you will never catch up to us, right? Just throw in the towel, right?

But this is so exciting because it's not about the computer itself. It's about the thousands of jobs that are created. The thousands of new jobs that we can't even imagine right now are going to be created when we harness this power and make the microchips that are needed in the brand new factories across our state. And so, this is how we transform our economy. Look what we're doing with Micron, just down the road. The ripple effect of Micron - it's not just for the immediate Syracuse area. Not at all. It's being felt in every inch of the corridor- the 90 corridor from Buffalo all the way through Albany, and other parts of our state are going to be beneficiaries as we try to create the supply chain to support the $100 billion investment. And I'm going to repeat that: $100 billion. You have not heard that before because it's never happened in the history of the United States before; an investment that large. That's what's happening here.

And if you're a student sitting in your chairs right now - unlike when I was growing up - and they're saying, "Sorry students, you'll probably have to go to another state for your future - the future is unfolding right before your eyes and you are poised to step into it and the education you get here, because of access to this incredible technology sets you apart from everybody else who is educated elsewhere. That's something I do not want you to take for granted and you can use that in all your marketing going forward. Tell them the Governor said so.

So, people are concerned about the power of AI as well, right? People see "The Matrix," they see a lot of shows - the power, the fear. A lot of elected officials are afraid of the fake ads that are out there and the deep fakes and the opportunities to continue to represent the truth, but that should not stop us. The fear of misappropriation should not be something that holds us back, because the good will so outweigh any negativity around it, and that's what we have to be bold and lean hard into - when others are stepping back, we step in.

That's what New York has always done. There is no challenge that we've never been able to identify and tackle successfully. That's why there is an Erie Canal. That's why 200 years ago, one person - sitting in a debtor's prison because he couldn't get his products to market and owed a lot of debt - sitting in jail devised and innovated the Erie Canal that would literally dig a ditch across the entire State of New York.

People thought he was crazy, Thomas Jefferson literally called him insane. He was the President of the United States and says, "We're not giving money to that insane idea." And, look what it unleashed - turned New York City from a little community into a financial powerhouse, a commercial powerhouse, and it brought opportunities all across the region because of an idea that took hold and people were not afraid to embrace it.

That is what we're talking about here today. Embrace it. Own it. We'll continue to support what you're doing here at UAlbany and all across SUNY because I believe in this. I believe in creating opportunities for families to be educated here and stay here. You don't have to go to another state. People from other states are now discovering us, they want to be here, and - my friends, who are very young - that never happened in the past. They now want to be part of this.

So, we're excited about this, as you can tell. Again, the leadership here is extraordinary. The change in curriculum and the focus on making sure that our graduates and our current research students have all the advantages in the world because this is not happening anywhere else.

And, with that, I want to thank Chancellor King again and invite him up to speak and, again, say this happens because of individuals - the ones you see right here - and I'm so grateful to have their partnership as we not just walk into the future, we are running into the future.

Thank you very much.

Contact the Governor's Press Office