The hearing room at City Hall ran for nearly ten hours on Monday, October 5, 2026, and by the end 46 council members had taken part. It was what the council described as the first hearing of its kind in the nation, a full day devoted to the risks of artificial intelligence and the rules that might contain them.
Speaker Julie Menin set the tone. “The idea that the AI industry is going to self-regulate defies all reason,” she said, pointing out that nobody asks airlines to police themselves. That is why the FAA exists, she argued, along with an independent body to investigate accidents. Financial firms answer to the SEC and other agencies.
The council has ten bills before it meant to build guardrails around the technology. City leaders say New York cannot wait on Washington, since federal efforts to manage AI have been absent, and the city, a hub of global finance and media, has a lot to lose.
Council member Frank Morano put the case for moving early. “Innovation and accountability aren’t enemies,” he said, noting that every major technology follows the same arc: breakthrough, excitement, and then, usually after people get hurt, rules. “I’d rather get the rules right before the damage is done.”
Who testified
Senior representatives of Anthropic, Google, Meta and OpenAI all agreed to appear. The day also included sworn testimony from industry whistleblowers Jacob Coxon, Daniel Kokotajlo and Alex Turner. Jess Asato, a British MP who is in a legal dispute with SpaceXAI, travelled from the United Kingdom to speak in person about the need for stronger safeguards.
Meta issued a statement before the session. “We are working to make personal superintelligence widely accessible so that it empowers people in ways that improve their lives,” a spokesperson said, adding that the company came to the table voluntarily because public confidence requires rigorous safety work and transparency.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani praised the city’s decision to restrict and regulate generative AI in public schools, but said the most urgent response has to come nationally. He also objected to the habit of casting AI as an arms race with China, which he said “loses sight of the fact that this will have an impact on New Yorkers at every level of their lives.”
The company that stayed away
Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI was the one firm that did not show. Menin had written to five companies between September 15 and 17 asking for voluntary testimony. Four had committed by September 27, and the council subpoenaed SpaceXAI the next day. When it still did not appear on October 5, the council said it would petition the state Supreme Court to enforce the subpoena.
That got the company’s attention. It asked for a meeting on October 7, and on October 13 Menin announced that SpaceXAI had agreed to testify before the Committee on Technology on Friday, October 16, at 10 a.m. Carmen De La Rosa, who chairs the committee, said the council was prepared to put similar questions to the company about data privacy, safeguards and whistleblower protections.
Sources
- Tech leaders, AI whistleblowers to face NYC Council questions at hearing
- Speaker Julie Menin Announces that SpaceXAI Agrees to Testify on Artificial Intelligence Safety Following Subpoena
