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New York City is moving from warning about the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence to building a more concrete strategy for regulating how the technology affects workers and consumers. The shift comes as AI faces growing scrutiny nationally, with former employees of major companies warning that the industry is struggling to contain the risks of the ever-growing, powerful systems.
Those concerns were on full display Monday, when the City Council convened its first citywide hearing on AI featuring representatives of major technology companies, lawmakers, whistleblowers from AI companies and worker-advocates.
One of the whistleblowers who testified was Jacob Coxon, a former researcher at Anthropic and OpenAI who made headlines with his resignation from Anthropic in September, saying in early September that AI companies are “gambling with our lives.”
At Monday’s hearing, Coxon again criticized what he described as the industry’s “extremely reckless” approach to AI development. “On the current path, I think it is more likely than not that humanity loses control to these AIs, and it could end in human extinction,” he said.
Former Google DeepMind researcher Alex Turner likewise warned that “misaligned” AI could pose a greater threat than China’s rapid development of the technology.
“China is not our only potential adversary,” Turner said. “With reasonably high chance, we are racing to build and grow our own adversary here at home, which is misaligned AI. Misaligned AI is everyone’s adversary, including our own, and one day may be more powerful than China.”
The testimonies drew praise from Council Speaker Julie Menin, who said whistleblowers had helped expose the potential dangers of AI and thanked Coxon for testifying at City Hall.
During the hearing, the Council unveiled 10 proposed bills addressing AI safety, privacy and accountability, including a measure that would prohibit companies from deploying AI systems in the city without third-party validation and require a human-operated “kill switch.”
Alice Friend, Google's director of AI and emerging technology policy, called for a “comprehensive” federal framework to address AI risks, citing national security concerns.
In a display of frustration at the companies’ representatives giving veiled testimonies, Menin said that no company at the hearing "can quantify the risk of something cataclysmic happening.”
SpaceX was the only company summoned by the Council that did not appear. Menin said its refusal to testify was “in direct violation of the subpoena” issued the previous week and said the Council intended to pursue legal action.
Union leaders also testified about the technology's effects on workers.
Manny Pastreich, president of Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, said members had encountered AI-powered workplace systems that had triggered disciplinary actions without human oversight, interfered with earned time off and effectively “gigified” stable union jobs. The union has also received reports of AI being used to replace workers and filed a grievance over the use of AI-powered “smart glasses” to monitor airport workers.
Because the hearing stretched for more than 10 hours, some labor leaders were unable to deliver their testimony in person. The Chief received written testimony from UFT vice president for education Mary Vaccaro, who emphasized the union’s efforts to ensure AI remains a tool that supports rather than replaces educators.
“Our mission is to strengthen the human side of teaching while preparing educators and students to use AI responsibly, creatively and critically,” she said.
In May, Comptroller Mark Levine warned that New York was “sleepwalking into the age of AI,” arguing that the city faced significant uncertainty over how rapidly the technology could reshape jobs, wages, industries and its tax base. Using predictive modeling from Moody's Analytics, his report, AI and New York City's Fiscal Future, presented five scenarios for how AI could affect the city's economy. In the most severe scenario, New York could lose nearly 300,000 jobs and $14 billion in tax revenue by 2030.
But while Monday's hourslong hearing provided the most visible display of the city's interest in AI, a quieter development at the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection last week offers a clearer picture of how the Mamdani administration has responded since Comptroller Levine’s assessment.
In a Sept. 30 speech, DCWP Commissioner Samuel Levine described a three-part strategy for governing AI: enforcing already existing laws, preserving economic rules that workers and consumers can see and compare and strengthening government and worker organizations capable of challenging powerful technology companies.
“We are enforcing the laws on the books, and firmly rejecting tech companies’ demands for special exemptions,” Levine said.
The following day, DCWP, the Commission on Human Rights and the Taxi and Limousine Commission issued a joint statement saying that businesses cannot escape responsibility because a human decision has been replaced or assisted by an algorithm.
They said that there already exists legislation, such as the Consumer Protection Law and the New York City Human Rights Law, which allows the city to address AI malfeasance.
“Discrimination is illegal, whether that discrimination is committed by a person or an algorithm,” said Christine Clark, commissioner and chair of the New York City Commission on Human Rights. “New Yorkers should never be denied a job, a home, or an opportunity because of who they are. As technology changes, our commitment to protecting New Yorkers will not.”
Levine also pointed to the city's recent $131.5 million DoorDash settlement as an example of the city’s shift in posture, which will return more than $115 million to more than 260,000 workers. The case, he argued, demonstrated that minimum-pay requirements still apply even when compensation is determined through an app's algorithms.
DCWP is simultaneously building a new research and analytics division, which the administration says will give the agency greater technical and economic capacity to test companies' claims about their technology rather than relying on corporations to explain how automated markets work.
Other parts of city government have also begun addressing AI's effects.
The Department of Education announced in September that it would impose a one-year moratorium on student-facing generative AI in grades 2-K through eighth grade while expanding AI literacy and teacher-supervised pilots for older students. And the Council has proposed legislation requiring city agencies to report positions eliminated or partially displaced by algorithmic tools, changes in salaries or job responsibilities resulting from their use, and new training required for employees.
Those moves represent the acknowledgement of the comptroller's warning, in which Levine's May report essentially asked whether New York was preparing for an uncertain technological transformation. While much of the City Council’s proposed legislation remains pending, the Mamdani’s administration's subsequent stance to the comptroller is that preparation means building the capacity to monitor, investigate and enforce rules as that transformation unfolds.
The Chief wants to hear from workers about how artificial intelligence is affecting their jobs and workplaces. We’re interested in hearing about how management is using or requiring AI, whether workers have been pressured to use these tools, and how AI is changing working conditions, workloads, job security or workplace surveillance.
If you have an experience to share, reach out to The Chief by writing a letter to the editor.
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