A $75 million gift to CUNY dedicated to AI

Good morning. It's Tuesday. We'll see how Governor Kathy Hochul's artificial intelligence initiative takes shape. We'll also look at a top lawyer's decision to drop Donald Trump as a client in two Manhattan cases.

Part of Governor Kathy Hochul's proposed artificial intelligence plan is about to fall into place.

Last week, she called for a state-wide consortium on artificial intelligence. She outlined a public-private partnership that would be boosted by $275 million in state money, with a center that would be used by a half-dozen public and private universities. Each would contribute $25 million to the project, known as Empire AI

Tomorrow, one of the six institutions, the City University of New York, will announce that it will receive a $75 million gift and that $25 million will be CUNY's contribution to Empire AI.

The CUNY Chancellor, Félix Matos Rodríguezsaid CUNY would allocate the remaining $50 million to hiring a director and as many as 25 faculty members, and establishing a new Master of Science program through the CUNY Graduate Center.

The donation comes from the Simons Foundation, founded by James and Marilyn Simons. Simons was chairman of the mathematics department at State University at Stony Brook (now Stony Brook University) before starting a hedge fund management company, and Marilyn, his wife, is a Stony Brook alumna. Forbes ranked him 49th among the world's billionaires in 2023, with $28.1 billion.

A record setter for CUNY

Matos Rodríguez said the $75 million was the largest donation in CUNY history (on top of the $52 million donation Hunter College's nursing school received in 2022). But it's a fraction of what the Simonses gave to Stony Brook, including $500 million last year. The Simons Foundation is also putting $100 million into the $700 million Climate Change Research Center on Governors Island.

David Spergel, the chairman of the Simons Foundation, said the gift to CUNY had been discussed for “maybe six months” and that he first heard about the Empire AI proposal about three months ago.

“It incentivized us to grow the CUNY program,” he said, adding that Empire AI would provide the hardware for high-end supercomputing. Hochul's proposal envisions a center in New York State with the computing power to run AI software and remote accessibility for researchers and students.

Hochul's Empire AI proposal comes at a time when artificial intelligence is attracting extraordinary attention and massive private investment. Companies like Microsoft, which last week surpassed Apple to become the world's most valuable company, have controlled AI power in large part because they have had the power- and data-hungry computing resources to build on. Another Wall Street darling, Nvidia, climbed to a $1 trillion market cap last year thanks to its strength in AI chips.

But investor enthusiasm comes with concerns that AI needs regulatory guardrails.

Hochul has committed to other major technology investments in the past: In 2022, she signed a $5.5 billion incentive package to close the deal for Micron's new semiconductor manufacturing facility outside Syracuse.

But the state's budget picture is different now. For Empire AI, Hochul will have to convince the Legislature to get involved as Albany tackles a looming budget deficit.

Matos Rodríguez said Empire AI would strengthen the degree-to-career pipeline in the CUNY system by providing research experience to undergraduates, along with tuition subsidies and fellowship grants for graduate students. And Spergel said Empire AI “has the potential” to make a difference for New York by laying the foundation for jobs and businesses in machine learning, high-performance computing and artificial intelligence.

“My view on this, both as a researcher in this field and watching my children working in startups in this field, is that AI will be a very powerful assistant,” Spergel said when I asked about the need for guardrails as AI develops . “If we expect it to serve as an assistant, it can be very useful. Perhaps the most important guardrail is that there has to be a human involved.”

Weather

A winter weather advisory is in effect until 1 p.m. Prepare for snow, sleet and rain with temperatures just above freezing during the day. At night it is clear and temperatures drop below twenty degrees.

ALTERNATE PARKING

Suspended today due to snow clearing work.

The latest New York news

Today the second defamation trial against Donald Trump begins, involving the writer E. Jean Carroll. For two other cases — including his appeal of the $5 million verdict in Carroll's first case — his defense team will have one less attorney.

Lawyer Joseph Tacopina withdrew from the criminal case against Trump, who will stand trial in Manhattan in March. Tacopina also declined to represent Trump in the appeal of the $5 million verdict. Carroll, who said Trump raped her in a Fifth Avenue department store dressing room in the 1990s, sued after disparaging her claim as “a complete con.” The jury awarded Carroll $2 million for assault and nearly $3 million for defamation.

Tacopina, who led Trump's defense during that trial, did not say why he decided to withdraw from the appeal or from Trump's criminal trial. That case centers on whether Trump falsified business records to mask where hush money payments for porn actress Stormy Daniels came from.

Trump recently said he wanted to testify at the new Carroll trial, and Tacopina was not listed as an attorney in the proceedings. Trump has said he regretted agreeing to Tacopina's advice not to take the stand in the first.

Tacopina was not listed as an attorney for the second Carroll trial. A Trump spokesperson did not directly address Tacopina's withdrawal from the other cases. The spokesman, Steven Cheung, said only that Trump had “put together the most experienced, qualified, disciplined and overall strongest legal team ever.”

The trial that starts today revolves around statements Trump made in 2019 after Carroll went public with the accusation that Trump had raped her. He called her story “completely false” and said he had never met her. She is seeking $10 million for reputational damage, as well as unspecified damages.

METROPOLITAN diary

Dining on Broadway

Dear Diary:

My husband and I went to a restaurant on Broadway for breakfast. Work was being done in our apartment, and the place was largely uninhabitable. We were grumpy and hungry.

It was quiet in the restaurant. We sat down in a booth, ordered coffee and started to relax.

A man sitting a few booths away was on the phone. It seemed like some kind of business call. He got louder and louder and I made a gesture suggesting he turn the volume down.

He responded by loudly telling the person he was talking to what he was looking at and then yelling at me to move if I wasn't happy.

I shouted back for him to move.

When he finished calling, I looked at him. He looked like a nice man. I started to have some regrets.

He walked past our table on the way out. I apologized, and he apologized too. He said he was born and raised in the Bronx and that he got loud and excited when he was on the phone.

We chuckled, shook hands and left it at that.

When my husband and I finished eating, we asked for the check.