Using tech and AI to drive economic growth

The New York City Economic Development Corp. is focused on finding innovative ways to use technology, especially artificial intelligence, to drive sustainable, equitable economic growth for New York residents and businesses. The EDC has a number of programs that support the city’s continued transformation into a “smart city.” President and CEO Andrew Kimball has had experience doing this work from his time as CEO of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and then Industry City, during which he played a key role in transforming underutilized industrial spaces into homes for green tech jobs and sustainability work. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How would you define a “smart city?” Is New York City a smart city and how?

A smart city is a city that actively works to cultivate an ecosystem of tech startups that are focused on innovations that will not only drive the economy but result in more efficient government, result in initiatives to address climate change and life sciences and scores of other really important work. The fundamentals in New York City could not be stronger. There are 25,000 startups in New York City. It’s one of the big reasons that bigger tech also wants to be in New York, so companies like OpenAI are moving here, or Google, Meta, Apple are all expanding here. Part of our job at EDC is to not only help build that ecosystem, but to harness it in ways that improve the city.

In what ways could New York City improve on being a smart city?

I think we’re working very hard to work with young startups to provide them with opportunities to pilot in ways that will not only grow their business, but impact the city in important ways. We work with other city agencies on this. We work very closely with the Climate Exchange of Governors Island, with the Brooklyn Navy Yard, with the Department of Transportation, the Department of Environmental Protection and on and on. A few examples are: There’s a company called Pliant Energy Systems that’s developing technologies in the fields of marine robotics, propulsion and electricity. They’ve been piloting at the Navy Yard, and they’re going to be working with the EDC on our Sunset Park assets. This is really critical, because understanding marine life, how we can harness it for energy, how we can measure it better in terms of sea level rise, are all super important things. Another great example is a studio that we’ve done with the Department of Transportation and a company called Popwheels that has launched an e-bike battery charging pilot program. There’s been a lot written about unsafe e-batteries – this is a way to market and make accessible safe battery charging stations so that people aren’t bringing batteries into their homes. We’re piloting that with them at Essex Market in lower Manhattan and at the Brooklyn Army Terminal.

How does a “smart city” promote equitable economic growth? How do you ensure such investments help everyday New Yorkers, not just big tech contractors?

We’re really proud of our work building an equitable startup ecosystem in New York City. So, we’ve got multiple strategies there. It starts with a program called Founder Fellows. They are startups that we select in cohorts of 50 to 75 and these are diverse entrepreneurs who are focused on the sectors EDC is focused on – tech, green economy, life sciences and AI as it’s associated with any of those innovation sectors. We provide those companies with access to technical assistance to support their real estate needs, their human resources needs, their VC outreach strategies. We’re really proud that, thanks to our partnership with these small companies, they’ve raised over $160 million just in the last two years. 

A second strategy on the diverse entrepreneurship front is a program called NYC Catalyst, which is a program in which EDC invests with a number of fund managers who then, in turn, make specific company investments. There are three main criteria on how we’re picking these fund managers: One is, are they focused on diverse entrepreneurs; two is, are they focused on New York City; and three is, are they focused on the sectors that New York City cares about?

I should also note … we invested close to $250 million last year with (minority- and women-owned businesses) in New York City, many of them smaller, that are working in subsectors of construction, which have not in the past had a lot of diverse entrepreneurs.

What projects have you and the EDC been working on lately that fit the smart cities description?

In addition to the programs I just mentioned, we often work to accelerate industries by setting up incubators and accelerators, and we are doing the same around (artificial intelligence). AI is exploding in New York City, as it is everywhere else. The competitive advantage New York City has is the diversity of our sectors. 

Applied AI is how you take this new technology tool and apply it across every sector, from law to accounting to life sciences to green economy. That is happening in New York City faster than in other places because our economy is so diverse. To accelerate that further and also create better access for New Yorkers to AI tools and entrepreneurship opportunities, we have launched a new program called NYC AI Nexus, where we’re offering $3 million to an operator of the Nexus. We’re now going through a competitive process and we’ll select a partner later this year to manage this hub.

The city recently released a report, “New York City’s Artificial Intelligence Advantage: Driving Economic Growth and Technological Transformation,” that laid out 18 commitments to expand AI use to drive employment and economic growth. Can you summarize some of the key commitments?

One of the top ones is the AI Nexus that we’re going to create, where we’re offering $3 million to an operator. That is one of the premier initiatives within the 18. We are also working with CUNY on a number of programs, as well as with the New York Public Library system to make sure that all New Yorkers have access to the tools to compete in what will increasingly be an AI-driven economy. So, those are really important things to us.

We have over 2,000 AI startups in New York City already, and one of our key strategies is to make sure that there are internships for New Yorkers with those AI startup firms, and a lot of that gets facilitated through our partnership with CUNY. One of the real competitive advantages we have in New York City is academia. It’s not talked about as much as it should be as a real economic development engine, but we generate $35 billion a year of economic activity from our colleges and universities. Since 2018, 500,000 recent college and university graduates from around the country have moved to New York City. They tend to stay here 10 years or more, that’s called the stickiness factor. And then, on top of that, we have another 500,000 students in colleges and universities in New York City right now. That’s 1 million out of 8.4 million New Yorkers right there, all young people, highly educated and ready to participate in an economy where AI and tech and the green economy and life sciences are all flourishing. If you just look at AI-specific degrees only for New York City-based colleges between 2018 and 2023, about 87,000 graduates stepped out of those schools with AI degree skills, and so that is incredibly important. Working with our colleges and universities locally, whether they’re public or private, is a top, top priority for the EDC, and something that we do through our life sciences program, through our green light initiative and through scores of other programs.

How do you balance the implementation of new technologies that capture immense amounts of data with the risk of using it for surveillance or intruding on individual privacy?

It’s important to get that balance right. The city, through its Office of Technology (and Innovation), issued a really important report a couple of years ago, which was more around the guardrails of both the opportunities around AI and the guardrails as it related to government in particular. Obviously, for the EDC, this is a high priority, as well. But what is critical is that we take advantage of this moment and drive the growth of this emerging ecosystem in the city, while making sure that young people in particular, but all New Yorkers, are educated on how to appropriately use AI for research or for business creation or for whatever.