Friday, May 2, 2025

May 02, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

Friday, May 2, 2025 

Welcome to another Friday edition of the Tech:NYC Digest, featuring our favorite five highlights in New York tech this week.

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Tech:NYC launches third Decoded Futures cohort, empowering 20 NYC nonprofits with AI training and tools (Tech:NYC)

  • This week, the Tech:NYC Foundation kicked off the third cohort of Decoded Futures, an initiative equipping nonprofits with the knowledge, tools, and networks to adopt AI to scale their impact. 📈

    • 20 orgs will participate in hands-on training, technical workshops, and peer learning sessions over the next two months. 

    • New this round: Each nonprofit will receive a $5,000 grant with the opportunity to apply for up to $100,000. Check out our blog to learn which nonprofits were selected for the third cohort! 🤖

Penn Station’s not-so-secret other life: The people’s dance studio (New York Times)

  • Penn Station has a side gig. In the West End Corridor, both K-pop and Brazilian Zouk dancers consider the spacious and smooth floors a dance studio. 💃 

    • The biggest draw? It’s free, as renting a studio typically costs between $30-$150 an hour — but most of the dancers are practicing just for fun. 🪭

On a dad walk with the founder of Brooklyn Stroll Club (The Cut)

  • Brooklyn Stroll Club has become a 1,400-member wide community for dads from around the world, all vying for a spot at monthly meetups involving carting their kiddos in strollers around Marsha P. Johnson State Park. 

    • Now, TikTok fame and social media has brands partnering with the club to provide dads at the event with goodie bags and educational materials. 

    • But for founder Joe Gonzalez, that was never the point. It’s just a community for dads to be around other dads, sharing advice, expertise, and helping each other build confidence. 👶

    • Also for tech dads: Check out this great community of entrepreneurial dads!

Why Spotify chose NYC (NY Post via Instagram)

  • Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify (a Tech:NYC member!) sat down with the New York Post to discuss why he chose NYC to build his company, and we couldn’t agree more with his answer.

    • One of our favorite lines: “This is where culture happens.”

‘Robotability score’ ranks NYC streets for future robot deployment (Cornell Chronicle)

  • Researchers at Cornell Tech rated every single street in NYC on how hospitable it would be to robots — based on factors like evenness of the pavement, concentration of people, and bus shelters. 

    • They developed a “robotability score,” the first of its kind rating system that can help urban planners and robotics companies plan for future robot deployments that won’t disrupt sidewalk environments. 🤖

    • Where will the robots be happiest? Elmhurst, Queens and Sutton Place, Manhattan.

Your AI-generated cartoon of the week, conceived entirely by humans.

  • Tech:NYC prompted ChatGPT to create a black-and-white one-panel cartoon.

    • The concept for the cartoon was entirely thought of by a human, and a human put on the finishing touches manually. But AI drew the bulk of it.

In honor of Star Wars Day Sunday, here’s this week’s cartoon. Click on the image for a bonus NYC story!


Submit your own human-conceived, AI-generated cartoon to [email protected] for a chance to be featured in an upcoming Friday Digest!

May the 4th be with you, New York! 💫

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