AI executives and whistleblowers testify at New York City Council hearing on safety risks
publishers 61articles 88first reported 24 Sep, 16:43 UTCdeveloping since 24 Sep · 36 editions
Senior representatives from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Meta testified under oath at a New York City Council hearing on the risks posed by advanced artificial intelligence and the safeguards their companies use.
Council Speaker Julie Menin pressed the executives about legal liability for serious harm caused by AI and the possibility of a catastrophic event. After receiving what she viewed as indirect answers, Menin said it appeared none of the four companies could quantify the risk of such an event, calling that “troubling at best.” She said Anthropic, OpenAI and Google agreed to attend only after the council threatened subpoenas; Meta had confirmed its participation earlier.
The companies were represented by Anthropic Frontier Red Team head Logan Graham, OpenAI policy executive Morgan Dwyer, Google AI policy director Alice Friend and Meta legislative policy director Shane Cahill. Friend supported a comprehensive federal framework for AI risks and said conduct that is illegal without AI remains illegal when AI is involved.
Current and former industry researchers offered sharper warnings. Former Google DeepMind researcher Alex Turner said poorly aligned AI could become a powerful adversary, while Anthropic whistleblower Jacob Coxon described the industry’s development practices as “extremely reckless” and warned that humanity could lose control of advanced systems. Former OpenAI researcher Daniel Kokotajlo urged companies to increase transparency and slow development of leading models.
HOW THIS STORY WAS MADE
Written from 8 articles, 4 with the publisher's own text; 8 independent newsrooms once syndicated copies count as one; this version written 151 h after the record first saw the story; the editor kept it as written.
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- Source articles
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- Given to the writer
- 8, 4 with the article's own text
- Independent newsrooms
- 8
- This version written
- 151 h after the record first saw the story
- Second model (editor)
- kept as written
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- passed
- Human review
- none
WHAT THE EDITOR DID
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