Just one month into his new job, New York City mayor Mamdani is cracking down on more than just predatory landlords. Apparently, useless AI chatbots are also on his administration’s agenda.
In a press conference held last week, Mamdani made it a point to single out New York City’s large language model as a target for destruction. According to local publication The City, the mayor was addressing the Big Apple’s $12 billion budget gap, at least some of which he said can be attributed to the city’s unstable AI system.
“The previous administration had an AI chatbot that was functionally unusable,” Mamdani said, referring to disgraced former mayor Eric Adams. “It was costing the administration around half a million dollars. That, in and of itself, is not something that can bridge this kind of a gap, but it’s an indication of the ways in which money has been spent while refusing to account for the actual costs of what these programs are.”…