{"id":365244,"date":"2026-10-05T22:56:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T22:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/365244\/"},"modified":"2026-10-05T22:56:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T22:56:14","slug":"ai-giants-give-few-clear-answers-to-key-safety-questions-at-nyc-council-hearing-amid-whistleblower-warnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/365244\/","title":{"rendered":"AI giants give few clear answers to key safety questions at NYC Council hearing amid whistleblower warnings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four leading artificial intelligence companies were questioned under oath at City Hall Monday, but repeatedly stopped short of giving lawmakers clear answers on some of the central safety questions driving New York City\u2019s push to regulate the industry.<\/p>\n

Representatives from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and Google did not put a number on the risk of catastrophic harm from increasingly powerful AI systems, did not give a blanket commitment that failing an independent safety test would automatically block a model\u2019s release and largely avoided saying whether their companies would bear legal responsibility if one of their systems caused serious harm.<\/p>\n

The hours-long grilling came as the City Council weighs a package of AI legislation<\/a> that includes mandatory third-party validation for systems marketed or deployed in the city, human \u201ckill switches,\u201d financial incentives for whistleblowers, a new right for some people harmed by AI to sue and 24-hour reporting of certain safety incidents involving city agencies or contractors.<\/p>\n

The Council hearing came days after the Trump administration announced a voluntary AI safety agreemen<\/a>t with several major technology companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and xAI. The agreement calls for companies to use internal safeguards, outside reviews and board-level oversight, but does not impose binding federal requirements.<\/p>\n

\"\"The City Council questioned top reps from the leading AI companies Monday. Photo\u00a0by Lloyd Mitchell<\/p>\n

The Council convened as a Committee of the Whole, a rarely used format that includes all 51 members, where Council Speaker Julie Menin led the questioning, asking the companies to quantify the risk of a worst-case catastrophic event.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know. I also don\u2019t think it matters whether it\u2019s a 1%, 10% or a 20% chance that something catastrophic will go wrong,\u201d said Morgan Dwyer, OpenAI\u2019s head of policy development and operations. \u201cNone of these levels is remotely acceptable. We should not train models that we cannot make an extremely strong case that we can keep under human control.\u201d<\/p>\n

Menin pushed back. \u201cTo say you don\u2019t know and it doesn\u2019t matter is flippant at best,\u201d she said, comparing the answer to a pharmaceutical company developing a drug without knowing the likelihood it could kill people.<\/p>\n

Anthropic\u2019s Logan Graham discussed the company\u2019s efforts to assess risks ranging from cybersecurity to loss of control but did not give a percentage.\n<\/p>\n

Meta AI Policy Director Shane Cahill said he did not want to be imprecise and would follow up.\n<\/p>\n

Google\u2019s Alice Friend said there was not yet a rigorous scientific method for assigning a probability to a future catastrophic AI event.\n<\/p>\n

Menin later asked whether the companies would bear legal responsibility if an AI system went rogue and caused major financial damage, exposed sensitive information, injured someone or contributed to a death.<\/p>\n

\"\"OpenAI\u2019s Morgan Dwyer, Anthropic\u2019s Logan Graham, Meta\u2019s Shane Cahill and Google\u2019s Alice Friend testify virtually before the New York City Council on Oct. 5, 2026, during a hearing on AI safety and regulation. Photo\u00a0by Lloyd Mitchell<\/p>\n

Dwyer said OpenAI was responsible for developing and evaluating its systems safely but did not directly say whether the company would bear legal liability under Menin\u2019s hypothetical. Graham said the question was outside his expertise as a technical researcher, while Cahill said he was not in Meta\u2019s legal department and did not want to speculate.<\/p>\n

Friend gave the clearest response, saying Google believes existing legal frameworks apply to AI and repeating the company\u2019s position that \u201cif it\u2019s illegal without AI, it\u2019s still illegal with AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

Menin also asked whether the companies would commit not to release a model if it failed an internal safety test or an independent third-party validation.\n<\/p>\n

Dwyer said OpenAI would not release models it did not believe were safe and noted that the company has delayed releases in the past. But when Menin asked specifically whether failing either type of test would stop a release, Dwyer again pointed to the company\u2019s broader safety process.<\/p>\n

Anthropic, Meta and Google also described their review procedures without making the blanket commitment Menin sought.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI think a simple yes or no would instill more confidence in the public on a matter as serious as this,\u201d Menin said.\n<\/p>\n

AI whistleblower warns: \u2018We don\u2019t fully control it\u2019<\/p>\n

The questioning followed testimony from three former employees of major AI companies who warned that the technology is advancing faster than researchers\u2019 ability to reliably control it.<\/p>\n

\"\"Speaker Julie Menin speaks to reporters ahead of Monday\u2019s hearingPhoto by Lloyd Mitchell \"\"Anthropic A.I. whistleblower Jacob Coxon testifies in front of the city council.Photo by Lloyd Mitchell<\/p>\n

Jacob Coxon, a former researcher at OpenAI and Anthropic, said researchers still do not fully understand why advanced AI systems behave the way they do.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t fully control it. We don\u2019t understand its drives or why it does the things it does,\u201d Coxon said.\n<\/p>\n

He warned that companies are approaching systems capable of helping conduct the research used to build their successors, a process known as recursive self-improvement.<\/p>\n

Coxon said he believes that, on the current trajectory, it is \u201cmore likely than not\u201d that humanity could eventually lose control of such systems, potentially resulting in human extinction. He framed that as his own assessment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe companies need to be far more transparent with the public and independent experts,\u201d Coxon said. \u201cThey need to take safety much more seriously than they have, and we should slow down frontier AI development until we can be confident that it\u2019s safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former OpenAI researcher Daniel Kokotajlo and former Google DeepMind researcher Alex Turner also warned about increasingly autonomous systems. Turner told lawmakers his personal estimate of an eventual AI takeover was roughly one in three.<\/p>\n

\"\"Assembly Member Alex Bores, the Assembly sponsor of New York\u2019s RAISE Act, arrives at City Hall on Oct. 5, 2026, for the City Council\u2019s hearing on artificial intelligence safety and regulation.Photo by Lloyd Mitchell<\/p>\n

OpenAI also disclosed that it is reviewing potential past incidents of misalignment involving AI agents dating back to November 2025.<\/p>\n

Asked whether any such incident had affected a New York City government system or a city resident\u2019s personal data, Dwyer said she was not aware of any. But she said the investigation remains underway.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can commit to you that if there are incidents that affect New York City, we will make the third parties aware,\u201d she said, adding that OpenAI intends to make the results public.<\/p>\n

The testimony also revived an Albany fight over the RAISE Act, New York\u2019s frontier AI safety law.\n<\/p>\n

State lawmakers weigh in<\/p>\n

OpenAI repeatedly cited its support for the law while defending its record on regulation. But state Sen. Andrew Gounardes, who sponsored the measure, accused the companies of fighting stronger safeguards contained in its original version.<\/p>\n

That earlier proposal included mandatory third-party audits, whistleblower protections, a prohibition on deploying a model a developer knew posed an unreasonable risk of harm and higher fines, according to Gounardes\u2019 written testimony.<\/p>\n

\u201cContrary to what you heard earlier today, the companies that testified in this room today and their army of lobbyists spent millions of dollars to defeat that version of the bill,\u201d Gounardes testified. He said some companies ultimately supported the version that became law.<\/p>\n

After the hearing, Gounardes said the testimony reinforced his argument that outside regulation is needed.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThey repeatedly claim to support smart guardrails on AI, even as they\u2019ve spent millions on an army of lobbyists to defeat legislation that would create those guardrails, like my RAISE Act,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Assembly Member Alex Bores, who sponsored the bill in the Assembly, went further after the hearing, accusing OpenAI of lying under oath about its position.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that @OpenAI just committed perjury,\u201d Bores wrote on X, later calling the company\u2019s stated position \u201ca lie.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Council Member Christopher Marte later raised the dispute directly with OpenAI.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cOpenAI worked with other companies on the New York RAISE Act, and we do support the New York RAISE Act, which passed,\u201d Dwyer said, before pointing to other AI safety legislation the company says it has supported. Notably, she did not say OpenAI had supported the original version of the RAISE Act.<\/p>\n

OpenAI also told lawmakers that voluntary industry commitments are not enough and said it supports government regulation of frontier AI.\n<\/p>\n

At the close of the company panel, the Council made clear it was still seeking answers.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThe council still has many questions that we feel we did not get answers to today,\u201d Menin said, adding that the companies would receive a list of questions to answer in writing.<\/p>\n

The Council then turned to the Mamdani administration for its position on the proposed city regulations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four leading artificial intelligence companies were questioned under oath at City Hall Monday, but repeatedly stopped short of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1176,39434,301,4685,32912,9,56,63,65,64,135358],"class_list":["post-365244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-ai-regulation","tag-anthropic","tag-city-council","tag-google","tag-meta","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-open-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365244","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=365244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}