00:00I think of 2024 when you first announced Empower AI, when you think about being at the forefront of transformational change that AI is going to bring, what is your answer for what New York's competitive edge is?
00:10This has taken us to a whole new level. This was important to me. I'm a New Yorker. I'm competitive. I want to be number one.
00:16And so we saw the great potential from friends that I have in the industry, Tom Secunda and others, brought an idea to me that we could have this incredible first in the nation partnership between academia, state government,
00:30and the private sector. So literally the idea was talked about over breakfast in October.
00:35I had it in my state of the state three months later and was able to secure $400 million from the legislature.
00:42We had to persuade them that this was in the public interest. And I will tell you, we now added another $90 million or over almost $500 million invested and has exceeded all expectations.
00:53And so it is, I put together an emerging technologies task force that is co-chaired by the CEO of IBM, as well as the CEO of Girls Who Code, because I want to make sure that we're diversifying the workforce.
01:06I want to see more women. I want to see people of color. And that's why New York is such an attractive place all across the world.
01:12But in our AI space, I wanted those to be the researchers, the thinkers, the innovators of solving some of society's greatest problems.
01:21So I literally spent a day on this weekend up in Buffalo, my hometown, saw what they're doing there.
01:27And the part that made me so proud was that we're about to announce in a few months our AI beta, which is 11 times more powerful than what I already have now with our alpha.
01:40We just launched. We're already going to next level opportunities in a very short time.
01:47But they're also bringing in more people to our state. And this was important to me.
01:51More of the brilliant people, the professors we're attracting from other universities, they have so many students who want to become part of this, not just UB, because this is for all of our universities across the state.
02:02They all want a piece of this because they can do their research and their Ph.D. work with power that no other student in the country will have.
02:09You're talking about talent there, and you've lent in particular to the labor that's needed, energy's needed.
02:14Yes.
02:14Do we have to embrace fossil fuels and nuclear if we're going to have the resources for this?
02:19I have an all-of-the-above approach. But first of all, one of the reasons Empire AI is housed up at the University of Buffalo is that I have an enormous amount of supply of hydroelectric power from the Niagara plant there.
02:30That power is about 25 percent of our energy. Another part of 25 percent of our upstate energy is nuclear already.
02:37I want to add more nuclear. I'll be the first governor in a generation and a very rare democratic governor who says, I can't assume that we're going to have the power available now.
02:48I need sustainability, reliability, and affordability, and I'm going to do that.
02:52And we're also looking at, you know, natural gas and other areas. But, you know, we have wind and solar.
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