New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani told a Manhattan crowd on Monday night that the federal government has walked away from regulating AI. He said that leaves cities, and the people living in them, to set the rules themselves. TechCrunch AI reports that Mamdani spoke at The People’s AI Assembly at Webster Hall. The AI Now Institute, a think tank that studies the social impact of AI, hosted the event. Activist and Broad City star Ilana Glazer asked the questions.
His core message was blunt: “Nothing has to be.”
The Short Version
- Who: NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, in conversation with Ilana Glazer
- Where: The People’s AI Assembly, hosted by the AI Now Institute
- What: He urged New Yorkers to reject the idea that AI’s rollout can’t be stopped, and he called on public officials to hold AI companies accountable
- Why it matters: The biggest city in the U.S. is openly positioning itself as a counterweight to Washington’s hands-off approach to AI
- Watch for: More city-level AI rules, and more friction between local governments and AI companies heading toward IPOs
Policy, Not Just Talk
Mamdani isn’t only giving speeches. His administration has already taken two concrete steps:
- A school ban. Last month he ordered a ban on AI use in elementary and middle schools.
- AI disclosure in real estate. Over the summer he introduced a policy that would require landlords, brokers, and real estate platforms to clearly label listing photos or videos made with AI. The goal is to protect renters and buyers from getting “house-phished” by misleading listings.
Glazer, who’s a parent, said AI’s arrival in classrooms unsettles her. “It just makes me nervous. It feels so non-consensual,” she said. “It wasn’t two years ago. Why does it have to be in schools?”
The Accountability Argument
Mamdani went after the industry’s framing directly. He described a “creep” that comes with AI adoption, along with “an intent to overwhelm that leaves people feeling as if there is simply no option.”
He also criticized what he called a “reckless adoption of technology without any kind of a reckoning with the limitations of that technology.” As an example, he pointed to the U.S. military’s February strike on a school in Iran 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.
He then compared today’s AI giants to Facebook in 2008. “There is this desire to speak about [AI] as if it is infallible, as if it cannot be questioned, as if the only people who can regulate it are the ones who are currently developing it,” he said. In his view, it’s “an attempt to escape any kind of accountability at any level, without also jeopardizing the potential valuation from an IPO.”
That IPO jab is pointed. Anthropic is expected to go public this year, and OpenAI has said it’ll list in 2027.
The Federal Vacuum
Mamdani slammed what he called the “complete abdication of federal law” on AI. He said the national conversation keeps getting framed as an arms race with China, which pushes “humanistic concern” aside.
The backdrop matters here. President Trump’s Superintelligence Task Force, announced earlier this month, mostly leans on AI companies regulating themselves rather than on new federal restrictions. That’s happening even as whistleblowers from Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and OpenAI warn that AI could lead to human extinction.
Why This Matters
What stands out here is the shift in who’s setting the rules. With Washington stepping back, cities and states are filling the gap one policy at a time. For anyone building or deploying AI, that means:
- A patchwork is coming. Expect different rules in different cities, especially around schools, consumer disclosure, and housing.
- Labeling is the easy first move. Disclosure rules like New York’s real estate policy are cheap to pass and easy for other cities to copy.
- Education is a flashpoint. If the country’s largest school system can ban AI in lower grades, ed-tech companies should plan for other districts to follow.
- Politics around IPOs. As Anthropic and OpenAI move toward public markets, accountability arguments like Mamdani’s will get louder and more organized.
What Comes Next
Mamdani is already looking past the current administration. “There has to be a very different kind of framework in how we think about AI, talk about AI, the accountability we’re willing to bring forward,” he said.
The practical takeaway for AI teams is to treat local regulation as a real factor now and not something that can wait. Full coverage of the event is available at TechCrunch AI.