Menin questions Milstein on AI czar resignation and OAA delays

Okay.

I am concerned by news that City and State reported on Friday that the AI czar, Jaihao Chen, who is our chief technology officer, resigned, I think, a week to a week and a half ago.

And reports saying that he resigned in frustration that a lot of positions were being not hired or being held up by OMB.

And that relates to my second question, which is Councilmember Gutierrez, I think she's still here, yes, and I passed bills last year

to create the Office of Algorithmic Accountability.

And so it appears that Mr.

Chen's resume

from what we're reading in the press was related to that and the fact that that office was supposed to be up and running by the city in June, but it is not up and running.

And in fact, in your testimony, you said you're now posting for the positions.

It's now October.

Thank you for the question, Speaker.

Jihao Chen served as director of AI and ML at OTI for two and a half years.

He did important work in the previous administration to help define and understand AI use throughout the city.

He's been very helpful in getting new OTI administration up to speed, and we wish him the best.

We are very excited to be staffing up OAA.

The law went into effect in December.

I was brought in this summer to help stand up the office.

We got funding in June in the FY27 budget.

And we've been actively working to hire for the roles, for the director role for OAA, and look forward to announcing something quite soon.

We're really grateful to the council for having stood up, for having helped us stand this up.

I think the work is going to be excellent.

It just seems that this is an inopportune time for his resignation, and I am concerned that

The office was under Councilmember Gutierrez's bill, supposed to be up and running in June.

In addition, the companion bill, which...

It's my bill, which we passed a year ago, required OTI to engage in rulemaking around this Office of Algorithmic Accountability.

But OTI did no rulemaking whatsoever, so it did not comply with that bill.

Instead, OTI issued updated guidance, ignored the rulemaking process.

There's been no proposed rule, no public hearing, no public comment period, and no adoption into the rules of the city of New York.

Thank you.

Thank you for the question, speaker.

So OTI is fully compliant with the law.

The rulemaking piece of the law had us this year submit the initial

the initial, I don't want to say paperwork, but the initial points for our rulemaking and the actual rulemaking will happen in this fiscal year.

We are also fully compliant with Local Law 35, which was brought under the Office of OAA as part of the December 25th

We've been in the process of fulfilling that report for five years.

We've done it on time for five years in a row.

That's the law that requires agencies to disclose their use of public impacting algorithmic tools.

And we're on track now for

for on-time reporting for March of 2027.

So we're really excited actually doing that work, very proud of it.

We just last week sent out the email to all of the city agencies to kick off this reporting cycle and are holding on this Thursday the orientation meeting that gets everybody rolling.

Okay, I mean, just to clarify for the record, we don't believe that's in compliance at all.

The office was supposed to be up and running in June.

I'm sure Councilmember Gutierrez will talk about her bill, but the office was not up and running in June and was supposed to do the rulemaking.

When do you feel then the law department will be, you mentioned law department, when can we expect to actually see the rulemaking?

This is in the March 27 deadline?

Yeah.

Okay.