Mayor Zohran Mamdani urged New Yorkers to challenge the idea that artificial intelligence must keep spreading into work, schools and public life without meaningful public oversight. In a conversation with activist and “Broad City” star Ilana Glazer at Webster Hall in Manhattan, he argued that people and elected officials still have choices about how the technology is used.
Making room to question AI
The event, called The People’s AI Assembly, was hosted by the AI Now Institute, a think tank focused on the social implications of AI. Glazer asked Mamdani about the technology’s place in society, including its arrival in classrooms. As a parent, she said that prospect made her nervous and questioned why schools had to adopt it.
Mamdani’s response challenged the sense that AI adoption is unavoidable. He said people can feel overwhelmed by claims that the technology will threaten jobs, children’s minds and human dignity. In his view, that feeling can make it seem as if there is no alternative, even when public choices remain possible.
That argument connects the personal unease raised at the event with a broader question of accountability: who gets to decide where AI is used, and who is responsible when its limitations matter? Mamdani criticized the idea that AI should be treated as infallible or that only the companies developing it can regulate it.
City policies put the argument into practice
Mamdani pointed to two city actions as examples of challenging assumptions about AI. Last month, he ordered a ban on AI use in elementary and middle schools. The source does not detail how the ban will be implemented, but its announcement places the mayor’s concerns about classrooms into a concrete policy debate.
Over the summer, he also introduced a policy requiring landlords, brokers and real estate platforms to clearly disclose when listing photos or videos are made with AI. The measure is intended to protect New Yorkers from misleading property listings, described as being “house-phished.” It treats disclosure as a way to help people understand what they are seeing before making decisions about a property.
Together, the measures address different settings, but both ask whether people should have information and a say when AI enters spaces that affect them. They also show how a city can take action while national rules remain limited, though the source does not describe the policies’ outcomes.
Federal oversight and human consequences
Mamdani described federal AI policy as a “complete abdication of federal law.” He said national discussions often frame AI as part of an arms race with China, pushing human concerns aside in favor of competition. He argued that public officials should be willing to hold AI companies accountable rather than leave oversight to the technology’s developers.
To illustrate why he believes limitations need serious attention, Mamdani cited a U.S. military strike on a school in Iran in February that killed more than 150 people, including at least 123 children. Officials involved in the Pentagon’s internal investigation told Bloomberg that overreliance on AI in targeting was one factor in the attack. The account presents this as a warning about the consequences of relying too heavily on technology, rather than proof that AI alone caused the strike.
The article also notes that President Donald Trump’s Superintelligence Task Force, announced earlier this month, largely focuses on letting powerful AI companies self-regulate instead of creating new federal restrictions. Meanwhile, whistleblowers at Anthropic, Google DeepMind and OpenAI have warned that AI could lead to human extinction. These concerns add to the question raised at the assembly: what safeguards should govern increasingly powerful systems?
A call to keep public choices open
Mamdani said the approach to AI should change after the current federal administration, including how people think and talk about the technology and what accountability they expect. His appeal to New Yorkers was to resist resignation: the arrival of AI does not settle whether it belongs in every classroom or how it should shape the information people use.
That leaves a practical challenge for public officials. They must weigh possible uses of AI against its limits and consider who bears the consequences when it is adopted. Mamdani’s message at the event was that those decisions should remain open to public scrutiny, with accountability treated as part of the technology debate.