Gutierrez questions administration on OAA reporting and Local Law 144

I'm going to pass it on to my colleagues, Councilmember Gutierrez, followed by Aldebar, followed by Maloney.

Thank you.

Good to see everyone.

My first question is for Deputy Commissioner.

Good to see you.

Going off of the speaker's line of questioning regarding the Office of Algorithmic Accountability, can you share, I know,

You said you're excited about this report.

You're setting up an orientation meeting.

It feels like not a lot of time.

I guess what can you share before the report is scheduled to be released?

What can you share about the cadence of how often you're going to be able to meet?

Do you expect the report to be released on time?

This is not a reflection of you, but I really felt like the previous administration under the previous OTI leadership.

Was delayed in many things.

And we certainly don't want compliance to be one of those things.

So if you can just share with me a little bit about the cadence, how many people, you said the funding you got in June, how many people will the office be able to employ where you are in that process currently?

Oh, okay.

That was it for you.

I had a question for DCB, but I can come back.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

Okay.

And then for DCWP, I just wanted to ask if you can share a little bit about how the implementation of Local Law 144 is going, the automated deployment decision tools.

Just wanted to see how the implementation of that law is going.

And that's it.

Thank you.

Well, thank you, Council Member.

Let me start by 144.

I think this was a really well-intentioned bill to regulate the use of automated decision-making systems for hiring.

I think it does have some flaws, though, especially in that it requires companies that use AI systems for hiring to conduct audits.

It doesn't actually require that those audits come up clean.

That's really a civil rights question.

That is why our administration...

put out a policy statement last week on behalf of DCWP, Commission on Human Rights, and Tansy and Limousine, making clear that existing laws apply.

But I do want to circle back to a broader point that this hearing reveals, which is that bias in decision-making produced by AI systems is a very real concern you're addressing.

These companies would like an exemption from the law.

The companies that testified earlier want to assert that if decisions are made in a black box, nobody can be held accountable for it.

I applaud this council's effort to actually impute responsibility for these harms to the companies making billions of dollars on it, and we would be very happy to work with the council to work on a

revised, expanded, strengthened, automated decision-making bill that places the responsibility to remove bias from hiring where it belongs.

And do you think that the...

Are there instances where the harm is happening amongst the city agencies using these tools?

I don't believe that I would defer to OTI and to those in hiring.

I don't believe that the city is using AI tools to sort resumes, but I would defer to others in the administration.

I can tell you in my agency, we have people reviewing applications.

Just as starting in January when delivery workers get deactivated, we have people reviewing that.

When consumers file complaints, we have people reviewing it.

We are a big believer in our administration that the people of New York should be served by the people of the city government.

Thank you.

Part of the package of bills that the speaker mentioned that we passed last December on Christmas was to get the city and to get OTI to report on those AI tools that every city agency is reporting on.

So we'll know soon enough.

But please, Deputy Commissioner, thank you.

Yeah, thank you for the question, Council Member.

So I think there's a couple of reports we're talking about here.

I want to give a little bit of context.

Local Law 35 is the report that requires agencies to tell us about the algorithmic tools they're using that have public impact.

And that report we have delivered on time every year for the past five years.

The process for it kicked off last week, and we'll be collecting data over the course of the next few months with the plan to publish it in March of 2027.

We have all the indications that that will come in on time as it has in each of the past five years.

So we're feeling good about that.

I'm just referring to the report from Intro 199.

I'm sorry, could you repeat?

I was just referring to the report required by Intro 199.

So that's the package of bills from last month.

Yeah.

Thank you for clarifying.

We are, the director of OAA, which we hope to be able to announce quite soon, will be primarily responsible for the additional reporting that will be required in March of 2027.

And in part because we have this good experience internally understanding process with Local Law 35, we think we're in a good position to move quickly on the additional reporting that will be due in March of 2027.

Okay.

And you said announcement.

Do you have someone already for the role?

We will have an announcement, and I hope you'll have an announcement about the announcement.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.