New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and actress Ilana Glazer convened at Webster Hall in Manhattan on Monday for a discussion on the societal impact of artificial intelligence, during which Glazer posed critical questions to the mayor regarding the future of the technology.
Mamdani urged New Yorkers to reject the fear that AI is an unstoppable force threatening their livelihoods, children’s education, and personal dignity, advocating instead for active community control over the technology's trajectory.
This call to action occurred amidst a federal government void of regulation, leaving city governments to navigate the technology's rapid advancement. At The People’s AI Assembly hosted by the AI Now Institute, Mamdani argued that the explosive rollout of AI is not predetermined and that public officials must hold technology corporations accountable for their actions.
Earlier this year, Mamdani implemented a ban on AI usage in elementary and middle schools. Glazer, a parent, expressed strong discomfort with this development.
“It just makes me nervous. 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?”
Additionally, the mayor introduced a policy requiring landlords, brokers, and real estate platforms to disclose when property listings utilize AI-generated imagery or video. This measure aims to protect residents from deceptive “house-phishing” scams.
These initiatives challenge the notion that the public and educational systems must passively accept AI as it emerges.
“Nothing has to be,” Mamdani asserted at the event. “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 criticized what he termed a “reckless adoption of technology without any kind of reckoning with the limitations of that technology,” pointing to a February U.S. military strike on a school in Iran that resulted in over 150 fatalities, including at least 123 children. Internal Pentagon investigations have suggested that overreliance on AI for targeting was a contributing factor.
“There is this desire to speak about [AI] as if it is infallible, as if it cannot be questioned, as if the only people who can regulate it are the ones who are currently developing it,” Mamdani stated, drawing a parallel to Facebook in 2008. He described the push for AI as an attempt to evade accountability while preserving potential IPO valuations.
With Anthropic expected to debut on public markets this year and OpenAI planning a 2027 IPO, Mamdani condemned the “complete abdication of federal law” regarding AI.
“At a national level, when the conversation is about artificial intelligence, it’s so often framed in this language of an arms race with China, and any of the humanistic concern, we just push to the side in a language of national competition,” the mayor argued.
President Donald Trump’s Superintelligence Task Force, launched earlier this month, favors self-regulation for powerful AI companies rather than imposing new federal restrictions. This stance persists despite warnings from whistleblowers at Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and OpenAI regarding the existential risks posed by the technology.
“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,” Mamdani concluded.
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