"Through the AI Hub, we will set the standard for AI development by supporting trailblazing research, attracting and retaining unparalleled AI talent, and transforming our state into the global leader in applied AI innovation, solving the greatest challenges facing our society today," Healey said in a statement.
Researchers have been working on applications to make computers human-like intelligence for decades. The efforts got a boost two years ago when Microsoft-backed startup OpenAI introduced ChatGPT, setting off a massive race to develop more apps that can create text, images, and video known as generative AI.
While local universities such as MIT and Harvard have been at the forefront of AI research and spinning off AI companies in the past, most startup funding lately has gone to California companies, where OpenAI is based. Massachusetts startups focused on generative AI apps like ChatGPT have raised $565 million this year compared to $46.4 billion for startups in California, according to data from Pitchbook.
The economic development funds and the AI Hub are meant to help Massachusetts regain a leadership position, much as prior economic development programs helped stoke the state's life sciences sector.
Among its top priorities, the new AI hub will focus on ethical development of AI, expand access to the high-performance computers needed to develop AI projects, and offer grants and technical assistance. A strategic task force of AI experts from both the public and private sectors that Healey set up in February recommended establishing the hub with those priorities.
The hub will also partner with the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center in Holyoke, which was established over a decade ago by Boston University, Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, the University of Massachusetts system and Yale. The center is the home of multiple high-performance computers which get electricity from Holyoke's hydroelectric power system.
The computing center in Holyoke will also host a new "quantum innovation hub" backed by $40 million of economic development money.