{"id":404754,"date":"2025-11-26T00:24:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T00:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/404754\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T00:24:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T00:24:12","slug":"new-york-city-council-passes-landmark-ai-oversight-package","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/404754\/","title":{"rendered":"New York City Council passes landmark AI oversight package"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York City Council on Tuesday unanimously passed the GUARD Act, a sweeping package of bills designed to bring transparency and accountability to the city\u2019s use of artificial intelligence tools.<\/p>\n

The legislation creates an independent oversight office, sets mandatory standards for fairness and transparency and creates a public list of every AI tool the city uses. Council member Jennifer Gutierrez, who chairs the council\u2019s technology committee and led the legislation, said the package creates the guardrails the city urgently needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just got through a campaign cycle here, and [AI] was a big topic about how opponents were utilizing AI tools for the purpose of campaigning, so it\u2019s still very fresh in everyone\u2019s minds,\u201d Gutierrez said in an interview. \u201cI think everyone wants to get behind more transparency and better functioning government that\u2019s going to protect people.\u201d<\/p>\n

The centerpiece of the legislation is its establishment of an Office of Algorithmic Data Accountability, an independent watchdog tasked with <\/strong>reviewing, auditing and monitoring AI tools before and after agencies deploy them. The office is also required to investigate public complaints and publish a directory of every AI system it evaluates, giving New Yorkers more transparency into how automated tools are being used, <\/strong>and publish a list of all AI systems it reviews.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis office should function in this way to keep New Yorkers safe, to ensure that we\u2019re being transparent, that we\u2019re disclosing with the public tools that are being used and that we\u2019re working really hard to check biases when they\u2019re reported,\u201d Gutierrez said.<\/p>\n

She said that for years city departments have used both AI and other automation tools to help make decisions about housing access, policing and benefits distribution, but that they\u2019ve operated with almost no oversight, leaving residents vulnerable to biased or error-prone algorithms.<\/p>\n

In May, The Markup reported<\/a> that the city\u2019s Administration for Children\u2019s Services had been using an algorithm to flag families for heightened scrutiny, using AI to predicting which children were most likely to experience harm, without informing parents, attorneys or even caseworkers.<\/p>\n

In 2023, the city started enforcing Local Law 144<\/a>, which regulates the use of automated employment decision tools across city agencies, to prevent bias in hiring decisions and provide annual tool audits.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis administration had been essentially like piloting some services through AI, but did not really disclose a whole lot of information,\u201d Gutierrez said. \u201cThey were not very forthcoming with contracts, with whether or not the like tools were being checked for biases, especially for agencies that were using these tools for public services. It just became evident that the topic of AI tools couldn\u2019t just live under this like new agency. It had to be separate.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said that the city\u2019s AI Action Plan, published in 2023 under Mayor Eric Adams<\/a>, offered guidance, but still left city agencies to navigate the technology on their own, resulting in inconsistent use.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis administration, I think, very smartly put together a paper which had a really good set of pillars and recommendation,\u201d Gutierrez said. \u201cBut they were just recommendations. None of it was going to be enforced.\u201d<\/p>\n

The legislation also includes provisions that create mandatory citywide standards requiring agencies to protect residents\u2019 data privacy, and to test AI systems for fairness and undergo independent evaluations before being launched.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Sophia<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWritten by Sophia Fox-Sowell
\n\t\t\tSophia Fox-Sowell reports on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and government regulation for StateScoop. She was previously a multimedia producer for CNET, where her coverage focused on private sector innovation in food production, climate change and space through podcasts and video content. She earned her bachelor\u2019s in anthropology at Wagner College and master\u2019s in media innovation from Northeastern University.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City Council on Tuesday unanimously passed the GUARD Act, a sweeping package of bills designed to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":404755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[66083,5229,18073,191135,2934,405,403,6640,5226,5225,5228,5227,491,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-404754","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-ai-governance","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","11":"tag-city-news","12":"tag-legislation","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-new-york-city-council","16":"tag-newyork","17":"tag-newyorkcity","18":"tag-ny","19":"tag-nyc","20":"tag-technology-news","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-united-states-of-america","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115613157081937123","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}