We Interviewed New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy About AI

TL;DR: Today we’re releasing a new episode of our podcast AI & I. Dan Shipper goes in depth with Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey. Watch on X or YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Here’s a link to the episode transcript.

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Xerox Palo Alto Research Center opened its doors on July 1, 1970 with the mandate to invent the technologies of the future. The researchers delivered in spades. The DNA of the modern computing environment—a prototype of the personal computer, ethernet, and the graphical user interface—were created inside its four walls.

What fascinates me most about Xerox PARC isn’t just what they built, but how they built it: Xerox managed to design an environment which nurtured a steady stream of new ideas.

That’s a concept New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy is thinking about too. He has a vision for the Garden State to be a hub for innovation—and in this episode of AI & I, Murphy tells Dan Shipper how he plans to make that a reality. Dan and the governor talk about his approach to designing “centers” for innovation, how he balances encouraging technological progress while ensuring the workforce isn’t left behind, and why he believes AI should be regulated through a national framework, as opposed to a state one. You can check out their full conversation here:

If you want a quick summary, here are some of the themes they touch on:

Public-private partnerships as a way to power innovation (00:18:45)

Governor Murphy and his team’s approach to supporting innovation in New Jersey is centered on what they call Strategic Innovation Centers—which take different forms like accelerators, incubators, and research centers, and share the common goal of providing a physical space dedicated to innovation. 

For AI, the governor has orchestrated the New Jersey AI Hub, a collaboration between the state government, Princeton University, Microsoft, and cloud-computing company CoreWeave. Bringing together the government, academia, an established industry leader, and a young fast-growing company blends institutional wisdom with scrappy agility. It’s an interesting approach to foster innovation. 

Attract talent by designing environments people want to live and work in (00:30:15)

While designing the innovation centers, Governor Murphy draws inspiration from established ecosystems of innovation like Boston and California in the U.S. and Cambridge, Berlin, and Seoul beyond its borders. He candidly acknowledges that New Jersey isn’t blessed with the same “coolness factor” that places like Austin, Brooklyn, and the Bay Area capitalized on in recent years. 

Nevertheless, the governor is focused on making New Jersey an attractive destination for people to “live, work, and play” by developing walkable communities, legalizing recreational cannabis, and creating economic incentives like an angel investment tax credit—all appealing policies to the next generation of knowledge workers who prioritize having a good work-life balance.

AI that augments teams, instead of replacing them (00:38:00)

The governor believes that AI should be employed to do more with the team you have, rather than the same amount with a smaller team. To this end, he advocates training people on how to use generative AI for their work, so that it automates the “mundane, prosaic elements” of their jobs and frees them up to focus on what they enjoy doing. All the 61,000 employees in the New Jersey government are being trained to use AI, and according to surveys, the effort is going a long way toward making them feel more comfortable with the technology.

Here’s a link to the episode transcript.

You can check out the episode on X, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. Links are below:

• Watch on X
• Watch on YouTube
• Listen on Spotify (make sure to follow to help us rank!)
• Listen on Apple Podcasts

What do you use AI for? Have you found any interesting or surprising use cases? We want to hear from you—and we might even interview you. 

Miss an episode? Catch up on Dan’s recent conversations with star podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, a16z Podcast host Steph Smith, economist Tyler Cowen, writer and entrepreneur David Perell, founder and newsletter operator Ben Tossell, and others, and learn how they use AI to think, create, and relate.

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Rhea Purohit is a contributing writer for Every focused on research-driven storytelling in tech. You can follow her on X at @RheaPurohit1 and on LinkedIn, and Every on X at @every and on LinkedIn.

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