{"id":371942,"date":"2026-10-13T13:34:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T13:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/371942\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T13:34:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T13:34:11","slug":"elon-musks-spacexai-to-testify-before-nyc-council-after-subpoena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/371942\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk&#8217;s SpaceXAI to testify before NYC Council after subpoena"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceXAI is expected to testify at a City Council hearing about artificial intelligence on Friday \u2014 coming after the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/2026\/09\/28\/nyc-council-issues-subpoena-to-elon-musks-spacex-to-force-testimony-on-dangers-of-ai\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">company was subpoenaed<\/a> by the legislative body.<\/p>\n<p>The Council previously tried to get the company to testify at a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/2026\/10\/05\/ai-whistleblowers-encourage-nyc-council-to-enforce-more-regulation\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">nearly 10-hour hearing last week,<\/a> when representatives from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta were grilled by Council members on the dangers of the rapidly evolving technology. The reps provided few firm answers, notably declining to quantify the risk of a worst-case scenario event.<\/p>\n<p>Council Speaker Julie Menin said SpaceXAI\u2019s absence from the hearing was \u201cunacceptable.\u201d The Council\u2019s lawyers had communicated to SpaceXAI that it intended to have a state judge force the issue if the company didn\u2019t agree to testify, per the Council.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNew Yorkers and the public at large deserve to hear directly from the companies developing this powerful technology about the safeguards they are putting in place to protect people from harm and how they will be held accountable when those safeguards fail,\u201d Menin said in a statement. \u201cSelf-regulation is not enough, and I am glad that we have now secured SpaceXAI\u2019s commitment to appear before the public in the coming week.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Friday\u2019s hearing will be before the <a href=\"https:\/\/council.nyc.gov\/committees\/technology\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Technology Committee<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>A member of Parliament in the United Kingdom, Jess Asato, traveled from across the pond to testify against SpaceXAI at last week\u2019s hearing. Asato has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cn8p0wdyelwo\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">sued the company<\/a> in the UK\u00a0over sexualized images of her that were created by its AI chatbot tool, Grok.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAI needs to be safe around our world,\u201d Asato told the hearing, calling the company\u2019s absence a \u201cshame.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Whistleblowers told Council members they feared AI left unchecked will bring dangers like bioengineered plagues, government takeovers or even an end to humanity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOn 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,\u201d Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic researcher, told the Council.<\/p>\n<p>The City Council is considering 10 pieces of legislation aimed at regulating the AI industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceXAI is expected to testify at a City Council hearing about artificial intelligence on Friday \u2014&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3250,66,2411,2979,19077,9,1057,56,63,65,64,137013,111888,282],"class_list":["post-371942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-elon-musk","tag-hearing","tag-julie-menin","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city-council","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-spacexai","tag-subpoena","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371942","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=371942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}