Four leading artificial intelligence companies were questioned under oath at City Hall Monday, but repeatedly stopped short of giving lawmakers clear answers on some of the central safety questions driving New York City’s push to regulate the industry.
Representatives from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and Google did not put a number on the risk of catastrophic harm from increasingly powerful AI systems, did not give a blanket commitment that failing an independent safety test would automatically block a model’s release and largely avoided saying whether their companies would bear legal responsibility if one of their systems caused serious harm.
The hours-long grilling came as the City Council weighs a package of AI legislation that includes mandatory third-party validation for systems marketed or deployed in the city, human “kill switches,” financial incentives for whistleblowers, a new right for some people harmed by AI to sue and 24-hour reporting of certain safety incidents involving city agencies or contractors.
The Council hearing came days after the Trump administration announced a voluntary AI safety agreement with several major technology companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and xAI. The agreement calls for companies to use internal safeguards, outside reviews and board-level oversight, but does not impose binding federal requirements.
“When the federal government fails to act, cities take the lead and that’s exactly what the New York City Council has...
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