{"id":364534,"date":"2026-10-05T02:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T02:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/364534\/"},"modified":"2026-10-05T02:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T02:56:08","slug":"coming-soon-new-york-citys-hearing-on-ai-risks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/364534\/","title":{"rendered":"Coming soon: New York City\u2019s hearing on AI risks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On Monday, starting at 11am Eastern Time, less than a day after Politico reported that Sam Altman said, in words that may last in infamy, \u201cwe believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency<\/a>\u201d, New York City\u2019s City Council will hold an important hearing<\/a> on AI policy. A number of AI-relevant proposals are under consideration<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Because New York City is a large market, I believe that I could help pick up some of the slack where the Federal government is falling short. (A number of states<\/a> are also trying to fill in the slack).<\/p>\n

I plan to testify. A preview of my remarks:<\/p>\n

NYC City Council Hearing on AI<\/p>\n

Gary Marcus<\/p>\n

Monday, October 5, 2026<\/p>\n

My name is Gary Marcus. I am a scientist, author, and NYU Professor Emeritus who cofounded an AI startup that was acquired by Uber. My Substack, Marcus on AI, has about 120,000 subscribers; on X, I have 250,000 followers. I am frequently in the media, often described as \u201ca leading AI expert\u201d and \u201cvoice of reason\u201d.<\/p>\n

We stand at a pivotal moment in history, and New York City has a chance to improve our chances, both for itself, and for the world.<\/p>\n

Contemporary AI is like a bull in a china shop, powerful and impressive, but difficult to control. Already, the advent of general purpose agents with broad internet access has led to tens of thousands of hacking incidents; other, related technologies, like deep fakes, have led both to a deluge of convincing and realistic propaganda and a sea of nonconsensual deepfaked porn. Chatbots have been implicated in a number of suicides, and even mass murder<\/a>. Not every fear that people talk about strikes me as realistic \u2013 I rather doubt that human extinction is imminent, despite all the headlines \u2013 but it is clear that AI comes with serious risks.<\/p>\n

It is also clear that the current administration in DC\u2014 deeply tied to the big tech companies \u2014 is unwilling to do anything about it.<\/p>\n

What we need, above all else, is an FDA-like regulatory regime for AI, in which AI developers bring their software to independent review, much as drug manufacturers bring their new drugs to the FDA for a review. AI developers should be obligated to demonstrate that the benefits for their new products outweigh the risks \u2014 and not have market access otherwise.<\/p>\n

I said the same to Louisiana\u2019s Senator Kennedy in May 2023 at the US Senate. It is still true.<\/p>\n

But the US Senate did nothing.<\/p>\n

New York City is in a position to do what the US Senate failed to do: demand independent regulatory review for AI used in its borders. The bill on third party validation<\/a> proposes to do just that. It would protect New York\u2019s Citizens from some of the harms from AI, and could allow New York to be a global leader, much as California has been a global leader around clean energy standards.<\/p>\n

In the strongest possible terms, I urge council to support this bill.<\/p>\n

Finally, events of recent days suggest OpenAI may have fired employees who were whistleblowing. Without strong protections from whistleblowing, like New York City is considering<\/a>, we are all in trouble.<\/p>\n

In sum by protecting whistleblowers, and demanding independent validation of new AI models, New York City can help lead the way to a positive, rather than negative, AI future.<\/p>\n

P.S. If you wish to testify, in person or by Zoom, you can sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Monday, starting at 11am Eastern Time, less than a day after Politico reported that Sam Altman said,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":["post-364534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}