BU to Help Massachusetts Expand Access to Artificial Intelligence Computing | BU Today

Boston University, led by its burgeoning Faculty for Computing & Data Sciences, will play a major role in a Massachusetts entity that will drive collaboration in cutting-edge artificial intelligence among state government, academia, and business.

On Thursday, Governor Maura Healey announced the AI Hub, to be designed according to recommendations from the state’s Artificial Intelligence Strategic Task Force. BU President Emeritus Robert Brown, who oversaw the building of BU’s Duan Family Center for Computing & Data Sciences before retiring from the presidency in 2023, and Azer Bestavros, whom Brown appointed associate provost for computing and data sciences, both played major roles. Bestavros advised the state task force, with Brown serving a leadership role in designing implementation of the task force recommendations.

Supporting the Hub will be the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC), the 12-year-old supercomputing facility that opened in Holyoke with funding from BU and other universities, businesses, and the state. Brown and Bestavros helped create the Holyoke facility and Brown chaired its board for its first decade. 

Brown says the Holyoke center will provide “leading-edge, AI computing infrastructure in support of the AI Hub,” which, he adds, will be “a center of excellence and outreach and will bring the ethical application of AI to businesses, start-ups, and educational institutions across the state. Our vision is to develop a world-class, AI computing resource at MGHPCC that will be used by university researchers and collaborators, partners, and others supported by the AI Hub.” 

Throughout the MGHPCC’s existence, Brown says, it has become a center for collaboration in computational research between its member universities. “Most recently, they announced the funding for a quantum computer there. This collaboration in AI marks the next level of collaboration between the universities.”

The Hub and the expanded MGHPCC, Healey says, will open access to high-powered computing, essential for AI, to Massachusetts residents, higher ed institutions, innovation businesses and start-ups. 

“We open an exciting new chapter in Massachusetts,” she said at the news conference. “This is a big deal. … The places where AI is applied first and best will be the places that lead the global economy in the 21st century. Massachusetts must be that leader.” Of the MGHPCC, Healey said, “We’re super-maxing this, in terms of what’s going to happen out there.”

The governor gave a shout-out to BU President Melissa L. Gilliam, who took office last July and joined Healey for the announcement at Boston’s Museum of Science. (Yvonne Hao, the state’s economic development secretary, lauded Brown’s work on the Hub as well.) Gilliam tells BU Today that she commends the governor and administration leaders for their vision and leadership in advancing Massachusetts as a global leader in artificial intelligence.

“The work of the AI Strategic Task Force, supported by transformative investments through the Mass Leads Act, is a testament to the power of collaboration between government, academia, and industry,” Gilliam says.” The Act, a $4 billion economic development initiative signed by Healey in early December, provides $100 million directly to the Hub, which will also tap other funds under the law. 

Gilliam adds that Brown’s “insights into the infrastructure needed for AI innovation have been instrumental in shaping strategies that will not only drive economic growth and life-changing research, but also ensure that the benefits of AI reach every corner of the Commonwealth.”

Bestavros, who is also a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor, served on a task force working group pondering “moonshot projects,” including computing infrastructure, that would require state investment and multiple collaborators. “Throughout these meetings,” he says, “I always brought up the MGHPCC as exemplary of how state investments…have led to transformative collaborations between academic institutions, and also spurred economic development involving industry and small businesses. I think that this argument, which was also supported by other members of the working group, carried a lot of weight.”

The other school partners in the MGHPCC are Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, the University of Massachusetts, and Yale.

BU, other Bay State universities, taxpayers, and businesses poured $95 million into opening the MGHPCC, which resembles the proposed AIHub,  Bestavros says, “notably around making computational resources available to researchers and practitioners. The MGHPCC has a very successful model for how universities and industry could contribute resources that augment and complement the state’s investments. That model could be leveraged for the proposed [AI Hub].” 

Artificial intelligence is evolving so quickly that former Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently marveled in an interview, “I’ve never seen innovation at this scale. …We’re soon going to be able to have computers running on their own, deciding what they want to do.”

Asked about Massachusetts’ standing in the exploding AI field, Bestavros says the state “has a huge leg up—namely, its academic institutions which are poised to leverage, and even contribute to, the development of AI. To a large extent, this is why so far the MGHPCC is the only example of a major investment by a state that led to impressive collaborations among its top research institutions.” 

While other states are also moving aggressively into AI (he cites New York, New Jersey, California, and Illinois as other leaders), Bestavros says that ”Canada is probably the gold standard.”

That country has three nationally funded centers that existed “well before generative AI became a thing,” he says, while in the United States, the major AI investor is the National Science Foundation, which has seeded multiple research institutes around the country.

Healey created the 26-member task force last February “to study AI and generative artificial intelligence technology and its impact on the state, private businesses, higher education institutions, and constituents.”

The MGHPCC was the first university research data center to achieve LEED Platinum Certification, the highest level awarded by the Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Program.