AI execs grilled by NYC pols on dangers of tech that could end in human extinction

Big Apple lawmakers took tech executives to task about the dangers of artificial intelligence during a marathon public hearing Monday — as the City Council weighs imposing its own restrictions on the industry.“We want to hear how each of you quantify the risk imposed by AI in the worst case, catastrophic scenario,” Council Speaker Julie Menin told policy leads and other executives from Google, Meta, Anthropic and OpenAI, who agreed to testify after being threatened with subpoenas.“I don’t know, I also don’t think it matters,” replied Morgan Dwyer, OpenAI’s head of policy development and operations, who testified virtually along with the reps from the three other tech giants.“To say you don’t know or [it] doesn’t matter is flippant at best,” Menin shot back.“If you can’t quantify what safety or risk is, how do you know the product is safe?” she railed, comparing it to a pharmaceutical company developing a drug and saying, “I don’t know if it’s going to kill people.”The hours-long grilling kicked off with testimony from AI whistleblowers, who, along with some grandstanding council members, painted a bleak picture of the unchecked technology potentially upending the city’s economy and infrastructure.“From my experience, the companies are being extremely reckless given the stakes,” said Jacob Coxon, a former researcher at Anthropic and OpenAI, who warned last month that AI could pose an extinction-level threat 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,” he told the council on Monday.The AI executives tried to paint a rosier picture, attempting to pitch the lawmakers on the benefits of the tech — including advancements in medical research and providing small businesses with tools they wouldn’t have previously had access to.“AI is making it possible to solve economic, scientific and social problems faster than ev...