New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on Monday that the federal government has walked away from regulating artificial intelligence and urged residents to resist AI's rapid spread. He pointed to his ban on AI use in elementary and middle schools and a policy introduced to require disclosure of AI-made listing photos. He called the federal approach a 'complete abdication of federal law.'

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani told a crowd in Manhattan on Monday night that the federal government has walked away from regulating artificial intelligence, and that residents should refuse to accept the technology's rapid spread as inevitable.

Mamdani spoke at The People’s AI Assembly at Webster Hall, an event hosted by the AI Now Institute, a think tank that studies the social effects of AI. He appeared alongside “Broad City” star Ilana Glazer, who asked him questions about AI’s future in society. Mamdani urged New Yorkers to fight off the sense that AI is coming for their jobs, their children’s minds and their dignity, and to take back control.

Why does Mamdani say the federal government is failing to regulate AI?

The mayor framed his remarks around a federal government that is doing little to regulate the technology, leaving cities to act on their own. He argued that AI’s rollout is not inevitable and that public officials should hold AI companies accountable.

What local AI rules has Mamdani introduced in New York City?

Mamdani pointed to two local actions. Last month, he ordered a ban on AI use in elementary and middle schools. Glazer, a parent, said AI’s arrival in classrooms unsettles her.

“It just makes me nervous,” she said. “It feels so non-consensual, as though…this has to be in schools. It wasn’t two years ago. Why does it have to be in schools?”

Over the summer, Mamdani also introduced a policy that would require landlords, brokers and real estate platforms to clearly disclose when a property’s listing photos or videos were made with AI. The policy is meant to protect New Yorkers from being “house-phished,” or tricked by misleading listings.

“Nothing has to be,” Mamdani said. “There’s a creep that comes with this, and there’s an intent to overwhelm that leaves people feeling as if there is simply no option.”

He described a “reckless adoption of technology without any kind of a reckoning with the limitations of that technology.” As an example, he cited the U.S. military’s February strike on a school in Iran, which killed more than 150 people, including at least 123 children. Officials involved in the Pentagon’s internal investigation have told Bloomberg that overreliance on AI in targeting was one factor in the attack.

Mamdani also took aim at the way AI is discussed in public. He said there is a push to treat the technology as infallible and beyond questioning, and he noted that Facebook made similar arguments back in 2008. He suggested that the goal is to avoid accountability at every level, and he tied that effort to the potential valuation of companies preparing to go public. Anthropic is expected to debut on public markets this year, and OpenAI has said it will go public in 2027.

The mayor called the federal government’s approach a “complete abdication of federal law.” He said national debate is often framed around an arms race with China, which pushes humanistic concerns aside.

That framing shows up in federal policy. President Donald Trump’s Superintelligence Task Force, announced earlier this month, focuses largely on letting powerful AI companies regulate themselves rather than creating new federal restrictions. The approach comes amid growing concern about AI’s effect on nearly every part of life, including warnings from whistleblowers at Anthropic, Google DeepMind and OpenAI that AI could lead to human extinction.

Mamdani said the country needs a different approach once the current administration is gone.

“As we are looking at what comes after this federal administration, there has to be a very different kind of framework in how we think about AI, talk about AI, the accountability we’re willing to bring forward when it comes to that,” he said.

Cet article a été rédigé avec l'assistance de l'IA.
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