Two of New York’s sweethearts, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and activist and “Broad City” star Ilana Glazer, spoke about AI at Webster Hall in Manhattan on Monday night, with Glazer posing questions to the mayor about the future of AI in society.
Mamdani encouraged New Yorkers to resist the overwhelming feeling that AI is inevitably coming for their jobs, their kids’ minds, and their dignity, and to take back control instead.
Both moves challenge the assumption that schools and the public must simply accept AI as it arrives.
“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 said, noting that Facebook made similar arguments back in 2008. “What it really is,’ he continued, “is an attempt to escape any kind of accountability at any level, without also jeopardizing the potential valuation from an IPO.”
Anthropic is expected to debut on the public markets this year, and OpenAI has said it will go public in 2027.
Mamdani criticized the “complete abdication of federal law” when it comes to 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 said.
“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 said.