After releasing a new report on the need for guardrails governing AI usage, New York City Public Advocate addressed the City Council on the impacts of screens and AI on students. During the hearing, he acknowledged the city’s recent efforts to engage with the rise of AI usage among students as a “first step, not a final word.”
“The new AI and screen time policies are not only an acknowledgement of the moment we find ourselves in—another turning point in the evolution of technology—but also a natural conclusion to the decades of data and research that highlights the negative effects of extended screentime for our youngest kids…" said Public Advocate Williams. "At a time when reading and math scores continue to decline year after year, it is important that our schools recommit to teaching the basics and do not allow machines to co-opt our children’s ability to learn and think critically.”
On Monday, the Public Advocate released Artificially Inevitable, a review of the role of artificial intelligence in government and what good governance of the technology can look like.. He also held a community forum to hear from New Yorkers about their concerns with the technology, which he then shared with the Council Committees today.
“Here are just a few pieces of the feedback we heard:
- ‘AI needs to be nonpolitical’
- ‘The system is designed where you find out [about these things] after the fact’
- ‘We are skeptical about everything’
- ‘Please support AI guidelines.’
These quotes convey how everyday New Yorkers are thinking about AI and its impact on their daily lives.”
As AI industry experts offer increasingly dire warnings about the potential damage their products can cause and ask governments to implement guardrails, Artificially Inevitable analyzes the current AI landscape and proposes guidelines for good governance of a technology and industry that changes daily. It presents the public with the foundational facts about and framework of modern artificial intelligence, and proposes principles for government use as well as guardrails to enact on the technology.
In calling for action, the Public Advocate declared that "The house is already on fire – it's about how we're going to allow it to burn."
The report urges the city to pass the Public Advocate’s legislation requiring entities to obtain consent for the collection and disclosure of personal and sensitive information pertaining to New York City residents, and inform them if their information is training artificial intelligence models. Additionally, it calls for the city to initiate workforce protections and worker trainings relative to AI, maintain AI-specific procurement standards, and hold public AI literacy trainings.
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