Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI is expected to testify at a City Council hearing about artificial intelligence on Friday — coming after the company was subpoenaed by the legislative body.
The Council previously tried to get the company to testify at a nearly 10-hour hearing last week, when representatives from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta were grilled by Council members on the dangers of the rapidly evolving technology. The reps provided few firm answers, notably declining to quantify the risk of a worst-case scenario event.
Council Speaker Julie Menin said SpaceXAI’s absence from the hearing was “unacceptable.” The Council’s lawyers had communicated to SpaceXAI that it intended to have a state judge force the issue if the company didn’t agree to testify, per the Council.
“New Yorkers and the public at large deserve to hear directly from the companies developing this powerful technology about the safeguards they are putting in place to protect people from harm and how they will be held accountable when those safeguards fail,” Menin said in a statement. “Self-regulation is not enough, and I am glad that we have now secured SpaceXAI’s commitment to appear before the public in the coming week.”
Friday’s hearing will be before the Technology Committee.
A member of Parliament in the United Kingdom, Jess Asato, traveled from across the pond to testify against SpaceXAI at last week’s hearing. Asato has sued the company in the UK over sexualized images of her that were created by its AI chatbot tool, Grok.
“AI needs to be safe around our world,” Asato told the hearing, calling the company’s absence a “shame.”
Whistleblowers told Council members they feared AI left unchecked will bring dangers like bioengineered plagues, government takeovers or even an end to humanity.
“On the current path, I think it is more likely than not that humanity loses control to these AIs, and it could end in human extinction,” Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic researcher, told the Council.
The City Council is considering 10 pieces of legislation aimed at regulating the AI industry.