The Metropolis Council is ready to grill officers from among the greatest tech corporations on Monday on the hazards of synthetic intelligence, and methods they may rein them in amid more and more dire warnings from business leaders and others of rogue robots and malevolent on-line brokers.
One metropolis official warned that New York is already dealing with such assaults.
“I’m pondering quite a bit about our monetary, accounting, contracting, cost techniques — that’s my position as Comptroller — and we’re already seeing a rise in assaults, and these are automated assaults,” metropolis Comptroller Mark Levine advised the FAQ NYC podcast this week. “These will not be human-initiated assaults or human-led assaults.”
On Thursday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani advised reporters his administration needs to embrace expertise that may be useful whereas being conscious of AI threats.
“I feel it’s all the time a stability the place we’re on the lookout for any instruments that we will use to make a extra environment friendly, extra glorious metropolis authorities,” he mentioned. “And we’re additionally wanting to make sure that this isn’t a expertise that’s coming to the expense of a workforce or of the standard of labor that we’re placing ahead.”
The heads of town’s expertise and employee and shopper safety companies have agreed to testify on the Monday listening to, in response to a supply. It was not clear whether or not officers from town’s emergency administration company would testify.
Officers from corporations together with OpenAI and Anthropic mentioned they’ll testify — however each firm excluding Meta agreed to take action solely after they had been threatened with subpoenas, in response to the Metropolis Council.
MORE: Why New York Metropolis Has Turn into an AI Mecca
“Given the excessive stakes, these companies owe it to the general public to return earlier than the Council, reply our questions, and supply enter on our proposed laws underneath oath,” Julie Menin, the Council Speaker, mentioned in a press release.
Menin made the extraordinary transfer of convening the complete Council’s 51 members, moderately than a particular committee, to look at the potential dangers posed by the fast growth of synthetic intelligence applied sciences and to query the executives.
Brooklyn Councilman Chi Ossé’s invoice to create an emergency plan for potential AI assaults will have a look at all alternatives to guard authorities from potential risks.
“Metropolis authorities ought to discover all choices, together with present legal guidelines and new laws, to guard towards AI-related risks,” he mentioned in a press release.
Different measures into consideration would set guardrails towards automation within the civil service sector; create new protocols for contractors to report safety breaches; and develop an emergency plan to deal with potential assaults on town’s infrastructure, public well being and welfare techniques.
On Thursday, the Mamdani administration unveiled new AI safeguards together with crackdowns on customer support chatbots and dynamic pricing, and launching a research on AI assistants. The brand new initiative is led by town’s employee and shopper safety, taxi and limousine, and human rights companies.
Sam Levine, the top of town’s Division of Client and Employee Safety, mentioned the transient had been within the works for months, and that it serves as a warning shot to lots of the enterprise leaders who shall be testifying on Monday.
“I simply felt it was essential to clarify that we aren’t going to be exempting AI corporations from authorized necessities on this metropolis,” he mentioned, together with town’s minimal pay legal guidelines and guidelines relating to “misleading” pricing. He added that he’s ready to testify on the company’s efforts on these and different topics.
The Council final yr handed a package deal of payments to develop a framework for oversight and transparency with how town makes use of AI, together with one which established the Workplace of Algorithmic Accountability, which was not too long ago arrange, in response to a spokesperson for the Workplace of Know-how and Innovation.
The latest price range allotted $1.4 million for the workplace, and town is “actively hiring for these roles.”
AI Tracks COVID
The town can also be required by a 2021 legislation to share which algorithmic instruments it makes use of, and by which metropolis company. Final yr, a report variety of metropolis companies reported utilizing AI-powered instruments together with in classes the place such disclosure is required: knowledge analyst, decision-making, or public influence.
In 2025, 19 of 58 reported companies reported utilizing 86 algorithmic instruments, a 56% enhance from the earlier yr. When the primary report was launched in 2022, 11 metropolis companies reported utilizing 31 algorithmic instruments.
The Division of Well being and Psychological Hygiene used essentially the most AI instruments, at 17, and the mayor’s workplace (then underneath Eric Adams) reported utilizing 12.
On the well being division, one algorithmic device is used to research COVID-19 variants in wastewater. One other, in use for practically a decade, displays social media like Yelp and, till final yr, X to search out complaints about potential foodborne sickness.
The elevated regulation and transparency come as considerations about AI techniques and potential assaults develop.
‘Inside Controls’
On Tuesday, leaders of prime tech companies signed an accord with President Donald Trump vowing to “self police” development and innovation of their business, which has been criticized in latest weeks.
All of them agreed to put in “sturdy inner controls,” in addition to have exterior auditors have a look at the effectiveness of the controls.
The officers, together with Elon Musk of SpaceX and Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, signed the letters voluntarily, with out an enforcement mechanism — though Trump mentioned “it might make sense to codify these steps into legislation and laws.”
Levine, town comptroller, mentioned in the identical FAQ NYC interview that town has benefitted tremendously from the success of those corporations — however warned of threats to the general economic system — and even to the federal government.
He mentioned town wants to make sure its cyber capabilities are as much as the duty, noting that New York has already seen a rise in “automated assaults.”
“We’re doing okay as of at this time, however I need to make it possible for metropolis authorities is effectively defended, and it’s going to take upping our sport on cyber protection,” added Levine. “However I simply really feel like inaction is actually not an possibility.”
