Governor Delivers Artificial Intelligence Training Tool to New York State Workforce

Governor Kathy Hochul has announced the expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) education and training to the entire New York State workforce, fulfilling a bold and forward-looking 2025 State of the State pledge that ensures over 100,000 hardworking state employees can use AI responsibly to better serve New Yorkers. This expansion makes New York the largest state in the nation to securely provide this emerging technology to its entire state workforce.

“We are putting New York at the forefront of the AI revolution, ensuring that the journey forward is safe and responsible,” Governor Hochul said. “I’m excited to fulfill our vision of embracing innovation, upskilling our employees and better serving New Yorkers.”

Today’s action builds upon the success of the recently completed AI training pilot program managed by the Office of Information Technology Services (ITS), which extended AI training and AI Pro, a secure generative AI assistant tool, to more than 1,200 users across eight state agencies.

Pilot results revealed:

• 75 percent of pilot participants saved time using AI Pro
• 90 percent felt their understanding of AI improved following the pilot program
• Participants generated over 170,000 prompts during the pilot period
• 86 percent of users want to continue using AI Pro after the pilot

AI training is offered to state employees in partnership with InnovateUS, an online platform governed by a coalition of public sector learning and innovation leaders. InnovateUS has trained over 200,000 public sector learners across 50 states and cities and in 80 countries. The two-part training is specifically designed to teach NYS employees about responsible AI use as a public sector employee.

Accompanying the training is the AI Pro generative AI assistant, developed by ITS and powered by Google Gemini, which will provide State employees with a secure environment to hone their AI skills, and unlock ideas about how AI could help agencies problem-solve and deliver even more for New York.

These new AI training resources, including the AI Pro tool, will be provided to the 50+ state agencies and entities ITS supports, while the AI training will be offered to all state workers. Responsible AI training will be required for agencies that elect to use AI Pro.

Last Fall at the Governor’s direction, ITS initiated an expansive AI training pilot program with more than 1,200 participants across eight state agencies, including the Department of Labor (DOL), the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services (DHSES), the Department of Health (DOH), NYS Homes and Community Renewal (HCR), the Office of People with Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD), the Office of General Services (OGS), the Division of Human Rights (DHR) and the Division of the Budget (DOB).

Participants represented a range of roles and professional experience levels, including workers from administrative, communications, policy, legal, service delivery, operations and technical functions. 41 percent of pilot users entered the pilot program with no prior experience using generative AI tools, and 87 percent of users had received no prior training in generative AI. Overall confidence using generative AI rose by 36 percent following the pilot program.

Pilot participants outlined numerous cases where AI Pro streamlined their work and facilitated decision-making, including crafting executive summaries and policy briefs, translating complex topics into easily digestible language, summarizing large reports and consolidating duplicative documents, and facilitating the creation of data dashboards, among other uses. Throughout the pilot and with all uses of AI Pro, careful human oversight was emphasized.

Users found that using AI Pro often allowed them to spend more time focusing on high-level, complex, and high value tasks.