According to TechCrunch, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani spoke at The People’s AI Assembly on Monday night, arguing against the assumption that AI adoption is inevitable and calling for accountability from AI companies. The event, hosted by the AI Now Institute at Webster Hall in Manhattan, featured a conversation between Mamdani and activist Ilana Glazer.
Mamdani’s comments come as the federal government does little to regulate AI, leaving cities to implement their own policies, according to the report. Last month, the mayor ordered a ban on AI use in elementary and middle schools. Over the summer, he introduced a policy requiring landlords, brokers, and real estate platforms to disclose when property listing photos or videos are AI-generated, aimed at protecting New Yorkers from misleading listings.
“Nothing has to be,” Mamdani said 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 called “reckless adoption of technology without any kind of a reckoning with the limitations of that technology,” citing the U.S. military’s February strike on a school in Iran that killed more than 150 people, including at least 123 children. According to TechCrunch, officials involved in the Pentagon’s internal investigation told Bloomberg that overreliance on AI in targeting was one factor in the attack.