Julia Stoyanovich urges near-miss reporting and enforcement capacity
Julia Stoyanovich, director of NYU's Center for Responsible AI, says she doesn't know of evidence AI is out to kill us all, and that doomsday predictors also sell the products. She calls for near-miss reporting, enforcement capacity funded with real budgets, and writing AI commitments into the city charter.
You can go ahead.
Good evening.
I'm Julia Stianovic.
I'm a professor of computer science and data science and director of the Center for Responsible AI at NYU.
I first testified before this council on AI, only it wasn't called that, it was called ADS, in October 17.
And the views in this testimony are my own and are not NYU's.
I'd like to make three quick points.
First, we need to collect and report the near misses.
Much of the conversation today is about AI-induced catastrophe, and I don't know of any evidence that AI is out to kill us all.
What I do know is that people making the loudest doomsday predictions are also selling the products.
And that a story about the end of the world is a very good way to avoid the conversation about whether the product actually works.
The risks we can document are the systems that are confidently wrong in decisions that matter to New Yorkers'lives.
Every one of those is a near miss, and near misses are what we learn from, if we report them.
Second, we should build the
capacity to enforce AI laws.
The city does not have an AI law problem as much as it has an enforcement problem.
Local Law 144 has been on the books for three years.
There have been two complaints and zero penalties.
And we all spoke about the six openings at the Office of Algorithmic Accountability.
We need to fill 666 or more.
To be able to actually cope with what's before us here.
New obligations on top of unenforced ones is not a safety strategy.
The kill switch won't help if no one is there to pull it.
And a whistleblower bounty won't help if no one is there to act on the report.
What works is an enforcer with technical staff,
authority to compel information, and a real serious budget.
Scope the validation bill to high-risk uses and write the standard a validator must meet, and then fund the office that checks the validators.
Otherwise, we will produce a market for rubber stamps, and we have done that before.
Finally, let's write this into the city charter.
The city has promised responsible AI since 2018 with no success.
The charter is the one place a commitment survives an election, and its technology chapter right now still governs cable television franchises.
And there's nothing in it about AI.
So let's make sure that this makes it into some durable record and the charter is the right one.
Thank you.