Governor Executive Order Establishing Artificial Intelligence Strategic Task Force

11:06AM / Saturday, February 17, 2024Print Story | Email Story

BOSTON — Governor Maura Healey signed an Executive Order establishing the Artificial Intelligence Strategic Task Force to study AI and Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technology and its impact on the state, private businesses, higher education institutions, and constituents.

The Task Force will conduct outreach and collect input from stakeholders and experts, advise the Governor and executive branch on the state's role in AI implementation, and find ways to encourage leading industries to adopt this technology to ensure continued success.

The mission of the Task Force is to create specific recommendations for how the state can best support the state's businesses in leading sectors around AI adoption. It will also produce recommendations focused on startups' ability to scale and succeed in Massachusetts.

"Massachusetts has the opportunity to be a global leader in Applied AI – but it's going to take us bringing together the brightest minds in tech, business, education, health care and government. That's exactly what this task force will do," said Governor Maura Healey. "Members of the task force will collaborate on strategies that keep us ahead of the curve by leveraging AI and GenAI technology, which will bring significant benefit our economy and communities across the state."

AI is a machine-based system that can, for a given set of human objectives, make predictions, recommendations, or decisions. GenAI as used in this Order, is a type of artificial intelligence technology that can generate many forms of content including but not limited to texts, images, and multimedia.

The Task Force will have subject-specific working groups that will create recommendations to leverage AI in leading sectors, such as education, healthcare, life sciences, robotics, and financial services. The launch of the Task Force delivers on a commitment from the Administration's Economic Development Plan,

Team MA: Leading Future Generations.

The AI Strategic Task Force consists of 25 individuals representing members of the business community, higher education institutions, and state and local government. The Secretaries of Executive Office of Economic Development (EOED) and the Executive Office of Technology Services and Security (EOTSS) will serve as state co-chairs. Mike Milligan of the UMass system and Santiago Garces of Boston will serve as cochairs from the academic community and local government.

"Massachusetts is the great state that it is because of our ability to harness the ingenuity and knowledge of our greatest natural resource, our residents," said Senate President Karen Spilka. "As technology enters its next era, that of Artificial Intelligence, I commend the Governor and the Administration for putting together some of our brightest minds in various cross sectors of the Commonwealth to help us reap AI's great potential and position Massachusetts to be a global leader in the technology."

Governor Healey will seek $100 million in her upcoming economic development legislation to create an Applied AI Hub in Massachusetts.

The funding will be used for a capital grant program to support the adoption and application of AI capabilities to solve public policy problems and to advance the state's lead in technology sectors, including life sciences, healthcare, financial services, advanced manufacturing, robotics and education. Subject to the legislative process, this capital fund will position the state to act on the strategic goals and priorities of the AI Strategic Task Force established by this Executive Order and will focus on capital expenses related to the incubation of AI firms, adoption of AI technologies and the development of AI software and hardware technology development and commercialization. The Governor's recently filed FutureTech Act includes a $25 million authorization for IT capital AI projects within the Executive Branch.

In addition, the Executive Office of Administration and Finance (A&F) and EOTSS have announced a partnership with Northeastern on InnovateMA, a collaboration between higher ed and the Healey-Driscoll administration to leverage AI across state government. Northeastern co-ops have started assisting the state with implementing an AI solution in the following use cases:

Policy Hub: Create a tool for MassHealth call center staff to more efficiently navigate policy documents needed for beneficiary customer support.

Resource Gateway: Create a tool for MassDOT's Highway Division engineers to more efficiently navigate the large quantity of Standard Operating Procedure's governing highway projects.

User Navigation: Create a tool for the riders and potential riders of the MBTA RIDE paratransit service to better understand how to access services.

Grant opportunities: Predict grant program eligibility for potential applicants within the suite of grants offered by agencies and programs under the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (e.g. farmers impacted by floods).

Members of AI Strategic Task Force

Secretary Yvonne Hao, EOED (Co-Chair)

Secretary Jason Snyder, EOTSS (Co-Chair)

Mike Milligan, Vice President and Chief Information Officer, University of Massachusetts (Co-Chair)

Santiago Garces, Chief Information Officer, City of Boston (Co-Chair)

Erica Bradshaw, Chief Technology Officer, Harvard

Representative Tricia Farley-Bouvier, Massachusetts House of Representatives

Usama Fayyad, Professor and Executive Director, Institute for Experiential AI, Northeastern

Patricia Geli, Co-founder, C10 Labs/MIT

Segun Idowu, Chief of Economic Opportunity and Inclusion, City of Boston

Dr. Robert Johnson, President, Western New England University

Meghan Joyce, CEO and Founder, Duckbill

Patrick Larkin, Deputy Director, Massachusetts Technology Collaborative

Jeffrey Leiden, Executive Chairman, Vertex Pharmaceuticals

Spyros Matsoukas, Vice President and Distinguished Scientist of AI, Amazon

Vipin Mayar, Executive Vice President, Head of AI Innovation, Fidelity

Sears Merritt, Head of Enterprise Technology and Experience, MassMutual

Armen Mkrtchyan, Origination Partner, Flagship Pioneering

Senator Michael Moore, Massachusetts Senate

Jane Moran, Chief Information and Digital Officer, Mass General Brigham

Ed Park, Co-Founder and CEO, Devoted Health

Rudina Seseri, Founder and Managing Partner, Glasswing

Soundar Srinivasan, Director, AI Program, Microsoft New England

Fernanda Viegas, Principal Scientist and Co-Lead of People + AI Research (PAIR), Google

Grace Wang, President, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Jeremy Wertheimer, Visiting Scientist, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

The Task Force will begin its work in February and present final recommendations to the Governor later this year. InnovateMA began its work in mid-January and the pilot will conclude in July.

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GE Plans for PCB Removal Gets OK

03:46PM / Wednesday, April 30, 2025

BOSTON — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved, with several conditions, the General Electric Company's Revised On-Site and Off-Site Transportation and Disposal Plan. GE's revised plan maximizes the use of rail and hydraulic pumping for the transport of sediments and soils in and along the Housatonic River that are contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls.

Approximately 75 percent to 80 percent of the material to be removed from the river will be transported hydraulically without the need for any trucks. Approximately 17 percent of the material can be transported by rail (combined with trucking). As little as approximately 5 percent of the material may be transported solely by truck to the Upland Disposal Facility, depending on the final transportation plans for Reach 5A and the successful implementation of the rail option.

The overall local round-trip truck trips are reduced by approximately 65 percent compared to GE's original plan that was submitted in October 2023. This will reduce local truck trips from an estimated 71,000 trips to approximately 24,600 trips.

EPA approved three locations for rail spurs for the loading/off-loading of material: Utility Drive in Pittsfield, Woods Pond/Berkshire Scenic Railroad in Lenox, and Rising Pond in Great Barrington. GE will submit to EPA for approval a pre-design investigation work plan that will propose sufficient data collection to allow for the design of the Utility Drive and the Woods Pond rail spurs. This work plan will be submitted no later than May 15.

This expedited schedule is necessary to ensure the rail spurs are operational when the Reach 5A (Pittsfield reach) remediation gets underway in 2027 or 2028. The design/construction of the rail spur at Rising Pond is not needed for approximately 10 years from now.

Although EPA concurred with the proposed use of rail, GE will develop a backup plan for the transportation of material via trucks. This is necessary because of potential capacity limitations, potential coordination issues with the sole operator of the railroad, staffing issues, equipment limitations, conflicts with freight shipments, accidents, and other issues that may prevent the use of rail needed to maintain the remediation schedule.

Material from Reach 5A (Pittsfield Reach) and from Rising Pond going to the UDF can be transported by rail to the Woods Pond/Berkshire Scenic Railroad in Lenox for off-loading and subsequent truck transport to the UDF. The three rail spurs can also be used to transport the 100,000 cubic yards of material that are required by the Final 2020 Cleanup Permit to be sent to off-site disposal facilities.

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