At launch event for new AI council, Gov. Healey says state employees will get access to ChatGPT
The messages were somewhat mixed last night at an event in Boston to launch a new group to support AI-related startups in the state.
Gov. Maura Healey took the stage to tout Massachusetts as the best place to start and grow a company. Then she introduced Sam Altman, an entrepreneur who started his first company in Cambridge in 2005. He now runs OpenAI — one of the fastest-growing companies of all time — from San Francisco.
Altman appeared via video to help Healey announce that Massachusetts will be the first state to roll out OpenAI's ChatGPT software to all 40,000 employees of the executive branch of government.
That deployment starts today for workers in the Office of Technology Services and Security, and will then be made available to other departments. Training will be mandatory before employees are given access to the software, Jason Snyder, secretary of the Office of Technology Services and Security, said.
The state will use ChatGPT's Enterprise version, which encrypts customer data sent to its data centers for analysis and also promises that a customer's data won't be used to train OpenAI's future AI models. The state signed a three-year agreement with the company, according to Snyder, and will pay $108 per employee per year, totaling about $4.3 million annually.
Healey said that she expects the use of AI in state government to "dramatically improve customer service to our seven million residents." She said it would provide "better government, faster delivery, better results."
Altman said he envisioned government employees using ChatGPT to draft documents and review proposals and potentially to create their own custom software using Codex , the company's AI coding technology. He also envisions state employees creating "entirely new workflows, products and services, based on their ideas to serve the citizens of the state."
Altman spoke about the importance of keeping data secure, and of trusting that an AI system will display "good judgment like a person would."
Thursday's event, held at the Kenmore Square headquarters of Whoop, the fitness technology startup, was the official kickoff of the new Massachusetts AI Coalition . The private sector initiative describes its mission as making Boston 'the most welcoming city in America' for entrepreneurs working on new AI startups."
One of the coalition's founders, Ryan Durkin of Whoop, said the coalition aims to host 100 events this year.
Members of the coalition include companies such as Suno, an AI music-creation startup; Toast, a restaurant technology provider and 7AI, a Boston startup that raised $130 million in December to develop AI that will improve cybersecurity.
While several major AI companies have recently opened offices in Massachusetts or begun hiring employees there, including Anthropic and xAI , OpenAI has not.
At last night's event, Healey made a pitch for Altman to move back to Massachusetts.
"I lived in Massachusetts for one summer, and I loved it," Altman said at the event.
He founded his first company that summer through the Y Combinator entrepreneurship program. That company, Loopt, put down roots in San Francisco and was primarily funded by West Coast investors.
"California is like my home, and I feel pretty stuck here, but Massachusetts is great," Altman said.
Stories by Scott Kirsner
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