Just one month into his new job, New York City mayor Mamdani is cracking down on more than just predatory landlords. Apparently, useless AI chatbots are also on his administration’s agenda.
In a press conference held last week, Mamdani made it a point to single out New York City’s large language model as a target for destruction. According to local publication The City, the mayor was addressing the Big Apple’s $12 billion budget gap, at least some of which he said can be attributed to the city’s unstable AI system.
“The previous administration had an AI chatbot that was functionally unusable,” Mamdani said, referring to disgraced former mayor Eric Adams. “It was costing the administration around half a million dollars. That, in and of itself, is not something that can bridge this kind of a gap, but it’s an indication of the ways in which money has been spent while refusing to account for the actual costs of what these programs are.”
Part of the government platform called MyCity, the chatbot kicked off in late 2023 and reportedly cost upward of $600,000 to build out. Powered by Microsoft’s Azure AI system, its purpose was to use “information published by the NYC Department of Small Business Services” to help small business owners navigate complex local regulations. According to an investigation by The Markup, though, the MyCity chatbot did anything but.
For example, when asked “can I take a cut of my worker’s tips?” the MyCity chatbot responded — in contradiction of actual labor law — that “yes, you can take a cut of your worker’s tips.”
The chatbot could accurately recite some city laws. When tested on the tip question, it correctly advised that “according to the City of New York’s Payroll and Tip Reporting information, employers are required to report tips reported by employees and employees receiving $20 or more a month in tips must report all of their tips to their employer.”
But its analysis of that information was laughably wrong: “therefore, as an employer, you are allowed to take a portion of your worker’s tips.”
Other examples of illegal advice abound. Asked if a small business owner can keep their store “cashless,” the chatbot has advised that “yes, you can make your store cashless in New York City” — nevermind a 2020 law banning cashless stores across the city.
Scale this across an entire city’s worth of small business regulations — funeral home pricing, worker’s protections, housing policy — and it’s clear the MyCity chatbot was a legal time bomb waiting to explode.
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