Maloney questions administration on government AI wins and procurement

Councilmember Maloney, followed by one, followed by Brewer.

Thank you, Chair.

As we all know, generative AI technology is changing how we communicate, work, and how businesses operate.

And the same could be said of our government offices, both how we work and operate, either officially or unofficially.

So I want to know how New York City agencies are adapting to the new reality.

The first, on the opportunity side, there are plenty of examples of government wins of adopting useful technologies for the public good.

In Connecticut, they have real-time translation in 80 languages for these kinds of public meetings to increase accessibility.

In California, they automatically check permit applications against 18,000 pages of building code.

in order to speed up reviews.

So my first question is, what is our equivalent win in New York?

And if we don't have one yet, what's the plan to identify those opportunities?

And the second question is around oversight.

If I may wrap up, OTI published generative AI guidance for agencies last December.

So as we're exploring these opportunities, is that guidance binding or is it advice?

What happens if agencies ignore that guidance?

Has OTI been prescriptive about a list of generative AI or agentic AI tools that have been reviewed and approved for city use, that are use cases that the city officially supports?

And then how are we thinking about procurement when these models are constantly iterating and changing every few months and when new, every few days truly, and when new technologies are being introduced?

Thank you.

Thank you for those questions, Councilmember.

I'm so glad you brought up the question about wins because we're really interested in both effective and responsible use of AI, and I think effective would cover the wins.

I don't have a perfect list here, and I'd like to follow up with that because we'd really like to represent the agency as well.

In terms of tools that we have approved, broadly there are two sets of tools that OTI approves.

centrally Microsoft Office Suite and other Microsoft tools, and that includes their Copilot chat, and some of their other tools have AI features built in.

And we also have a central license for Adobe Creative Cloud, and many of those

tools have AI features built in.

Other tools, other software tools that are used by agencies are reviewed for the most part on a one-off basis by OTI,

and we are still determining the best way to move forward with that process to make sure that we are managing, identifying and managing risk

appropriately.

I think your question about procurement is an excellent one and part of what we have started to research ahead of having staff at OAA, we've started to talk with

various experts in risk management to understand some of the ways that we might think about risk in an ongoing way.

When traditionally all kinds of procurement has, like there's a gate at the beginning for various concerns, and then it's rolling.

I think you're right, that's not appropriate for this situation, and we should have more to discuss on that in the coming months, but it's an active question that we have as well.

Thank you so much.

Council Member 1, followed by Hanks.