Two New York sweethearts, Mayor Zoran Mamdani and activist and “Broad City” star Ilana Glazer, spoke about AI at Manhattan’s Webster Hall on Monday night, with Glazer quizzing the mayor on the future of AI in society.
Mamdani encouraged New Yorkers to resist the overwhelming feeling that AI will inevitably come to take away their jobs, their children’s hearts and their dignity, and instead take back control.
His message comes at a time when the federal government has done little to regulate AI, leaving cities to act on their own. Speaking at The People’s AI Assembly, an event hosted by the AI Now Institute, a think tank that examines the social impact of AI, Mamdani argued that the technology’s rapid adoption is inevitable and that public officials should hold AI companies accountable.
Mamdani last month ordered a ban on the use of AI in primary and secondary schools. Glaser, a parent, said she gets anxious when technology is introduced into the classroom.
“I’m just nervous. I feel like there’s so little consensus. It’s like… this has to happen in school. This wasn’t the case two years ago. Why does it have to be in school?” she said.
Over the summer, the mayor also introduced a policy that would require landlords, agents and real estate platforms to clearly disclose when photos or videos of listings were created using AI. This policy is intended to protect New Yorkers from “house fishing” and being deceived by misleading listings.
Both movements challenge the assumption that schools and the public must just accept the advent of AI.
“Nothing has to be that way,” Mamdani said at Monday’s event. “It has a creepy vibe to it and is meant to overwhelm people and make them feel as if they have no options at all.”
He cited the U.S. military attack on an Iranian school in February that killed more than 150 people, including at least 123 children, and said there was a “reckless introduction of technology without any regard for its limitations.” Officials involved in the Pentagon’s internal investigation told Bloomberg that an overreliance on AI for targeting contributed to the attack.
“There’s a tendency to want to talk about[AI]as if it’s infallible, as if it can’t be questioned, as if the only people who can regulate it are those who are currently developing it,” Mamdani said, noting that Facebook made a similar claim in 2008. “What it really is is an attempt to evade any accountability at any level without jeopardizing the potential valuation of an IPO.”
Anthropic is scheduled to debut on the public market this year, while OpenAI has announced a 2027 launch.
Mamdani criticized the “complete abandonment of federal law” regarding AI.
“So often when we have conversations about artificial intelligence at the national level, it’s framed in terms of an arms race with China, and all the humanitarian concerns are just pushed aside in terms of national competition,” the mayor said.
President Donald Trump’s Superintelligence Task Force, announced earlier this month, is primarily focused on allowing powerful AI companies to self-regulate rather than creating new federal regulations. This comes despite growing concerns about AI’s impact on all aspects of human life, including warnings from whistleblowers at Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and OpenAI that AI could lead to human extinction.
“As we look at what happens after this federal government, we need a very different kind of framework for thinking about AI, talking about AI, and the accountability that we actively present around it,” Mamdani said.
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