Menin cites BCG report projecting 600,000 New Yorkers displaced

So Boston Consulting released a report recently that said that they believe there will be a 10 to 15 percent of the workforce could be displaced by AI by 2031.

If we took that out to look at New York City, New York City has roughly 4.2 million public and private sector workers.

At 15%, that would mean more than 600,000 New Yorkers potentially displaced from their jobs.

Was that an assessment that you agree with?

I'm not familiar with that particular report.

I'd be happy to follow up in our written testimony with more details on OpenAI's analysis into this topic.

We've looked at job exposure.

Now, exposure doesn't mean elimination.

It means that jobs might change over time.

So I'm happy to follow up with some details of that research.

I'm going to now turn to Mr.

Graham to answer the question about what you believe the percentage of New York's workforce do you estimate will be displaced by AI over the next five years?

Well, I don't have an exact number.

We are particularly focused and concerned about this question of job impacts.

We've been very vocal very early for the past few years on exactly this.

To do this, we set up an economic research team.

They sit right next to my team on the floor.

And they published a number of things that I think actually contain valuable information here.

A number of economic scenarios, interactive economic scenarios to understand what the impacts on growth, unemployment might be, as well as an economic policy framework

to try to wrestle with exactly that question of what we think governments ought to do there.

I'll just say the fact that, you know, the reason why we are doing this is because we're particularly concerned about exactly that question.

I mean, obviously losing a career job is catastrophic to any worker and to their family.

So displacement on this scale is going to have enormous consequences, not only on the individual and family level, but for our entire city and the economy.

I'll move on to Mr.

Cahill.

Madam Speaker, first off, I want to acknowledge absolutely the concern in relation to how you have articulated it.

That is indeed a concern, but I look at this somewhat differently.

I was reading some incredibly impressive statistics from NYC EDC in relation to the investments that are happening here in New York.

I think 20 billion VC investment in AI, 40,000 jobs.

I think those figures are from 2022, so it's probably a little bit more by now.

But what I'm really actually incredibly excited about and very optimistic about is about small businesses.

Small businesses are the backbone of the economy.

That's so true for New York.

There are so many small businesses.

It's truly, truly awesome.

And we believe that the impact will even be larger from small businesses, which will have personal super intelligence and be empowered to really grow their businesses, which in turn will lead to more jobs and growth.

We don't believe that in our vision.

for superintelligence is augmentation.

It's invention, not automation.

It's really about empowering people.

And this is why we developed Muse for Business.

I'd be happy for small businesses, I'd be happy to talk a little bit more about that in detail as we move through the day.

I just wanted to mention as well, as I was kind of like reading stuff for today, I was reading about Y Combinator's cohort for 2026.

There are 240 AIVCs in the 2026 cohort, and that's in New York City.

So I just thought that was pretty awesome.

Yes, no one's doubting the importance of starting these VC firms here, whether it's through Y Combinator or through Cornell Technion, which is in my district, which we're thrilled is incubating so many startups.

That is obviously something we want to encourage, to encourage these businesses to locate here in the city.

I think our concern is obviously on this job displacement.

Since you mentioned small businesses, unfortunately, more small businesses have closed this past year than opened.

So the situation for small businesses is dire, and it's something obviously that this council is taking very seriously.

Ms.

Friend.

Madam Speaker, I don't have statistics for New York City in particular at hand, and I'd be happy to ask our team to get those to you right away.

What I can say is that we also have been in

investing a lot in research into the labor impacts of AI.

And from what the early empirical evidence that is available, from what we can see, it is likely that some jobs will be eliminated, some jobs will be created net new,

But most jobs will change.

And so the other thing we've been doing is investing in upskilling for workers in multiple different sectors

through our AI Opportunity Fund at Google.org and through several other investments to ensure that we can all navigate this transition successfully.

And I'll just close by saying the council is investing in upskilling, making sure that workers have those new tools in this economy.

And we are very focused on that as well.

I'm going to pass it over to Chair De La Rosa.