The hairy effects of artificial intelligence have been fodder for thrillers and science fiction, white papers and Silicon Valley Substacks \u2014 and now a report from New York City\u2019s comptroller, who argues that the city\u2019s economy is on track to be transformed by the technology.<\/p>\n
The city must move swiftly to prepare for the job losses that may result, the comptroller, Mark Levine, warned in the report<\/a>, which was released on Thursday morning. The report marks the first major effort by city officials to engage with the looming question of what A.I. will mean for New York\u2019s future.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no city in America \u2014 and perhaps none on earth \u2014 more exposed to both the promise and peril of artificial intelligence than New York City,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n The report outlines five scenarios, which range from rosy to dire, and assigns each one a probability of occurring.<\/p>\n At the sunniest end of the spectrum, A.I. could boost the stock market 9 percent annually and the number of available office jobs nearly 1 percent, over the period between 2025 and 2030; on the darker side, it could cause the private sector to lose roughly 110,000 jobs in 2027.<\/p>\n The most likely scenario in New York City, according to the report, is one in which A.I. moderately boosts jobs and economic growth, leading the private sector to add an average of 52,000 jobs per year between 2025 and 2030.<\/p>\n In the second-most likely scenario, the A.I. bubble would burst, the stock market would decline nearly 35 percent in a year and the city\u2019s private sector would lose 52,500 jobs within a year.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think people appreciate how much this is a New York story \u2014 this is not just a Silicon Valley story,\u201d Mr. Levine said on Wednesday at a briefing about the report.<\/p>\n The report\u2019s methodology is based on a nationwide analysis<\/a> that Moody\u2019s Analytics, the ratings agency, did earlier this year, which applied similar scenarios to the U.S. economy.<\/p>\n New York City needs a \u201crainy day fund\u201d to gird itself for the economic tumult ahead, the comptroller\u2019s report argues, proposing that the fund equal 16 percent of tax revenues. This figure is based on how New York City has weathered previous economic downturns, according to the report.<\/p>\n Former comptrollers have called for bolstering reserves plenty of times. Mr. Levine\u2019s predecessor, Brad Lander, called on the city to do so last year<\/a>, as President Trump\u2019s tariffs sowed economic chaos. And Mr. Lander\u2019s predecessor, Scott Stringer, warned<\/a> more than a decade ago that the city was more than $1 billion short of what it needed if it faced a financial crisis.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve never seen anything like this \u2014 the industrial revolution took what, 40 years to play out in New York City. I\u2019m giving you a three to five year timeline here,\u201d Mr. Levine said. \u201cIt\u2019s a heavy lift, but this is a long term fight.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Levine\u2019s calls for economic prudence land in the final stretch of what has been a bumpy budget fight for Mayor Zohran Mamdani.<\/p>\n Facing a yawning deficit, Mr. Mamdani first proposed closing it, in part, by draining several of the city\u2019s budget reserves. After intense pressure from bond ratings agencies, he ultimately changed course and partially replenished them.<\/p>\n Mr. Levine applauded the mayor\u2019s change in direction, praising him specifically for delaying the expansion of a popular housing voucher program to save money.<\/p>\n Mr. Mamdani\u2019s campaign built steam with calls to make life in New York City more affordable, in part by cutting the cost of essentials like rent and child care.<\/p>\n Mr. Levine\u2019s report argues that the city ought to focus, too, on coming fluctuations in the job market.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re going to get a lot of automation, which means replacing people with algorithms,\u201d said Simon Johnson, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, adding that the A.I. boom is likely to displace at least some white-collar workers and that it is not yet clear who will benefit from any potential job gains.<\/p>\n Historically, Mr. Johnson added, new digital technologies have tended to make inequality worse.<\/p>\n