Nurse Michelle Barnaby invokes informed consent for AI risks
Michelle Barnaby, a NYC nurse studying AI governance, notes no major AI lab could quantify catastrophic risk and compares the situation to informed consent in healthcare. She calls for independent pre-deployment audits, mandatory incident reporting, override switches, whistleblower protections, and developer liability.
My name is Michelle Burnaby.
I'm a New York City nurse, a Columbia graduate, and a former NYSNA member.
Out of concern for the future of patient care and public health, I now study AI governance and safety with Blue Dot Impact.
Today, not one of the major labs, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, or Meta could quantify the risk of catastrophic AI failure.
In healthcare, informed consent would apply.
We disclose the risk and the patient decides.
I can't imagine handing a patient a drug or a device and saying, this may carry a catastrophic risk to you or your family's life, and we just don't know, but you should take it.
Right now, the public is the patient, and we are being denied the right to know the risks and the right to say no.
Speaker Menon.
Rightly noted that we don't ask the airline industry to self-regulate.
In hospitals, we report our errors, even the near misses.
AI companies.
face no such mandate.
When you ask if these frontier labs bear legal responsibility for the harm their AI causes, only Google answered clearly.
The other three dodged.
As a nurse whose entire profession is built on accountability, I find that deeply unserious.
Today, I heard the labs say voluntary frameworks aren't enough.
We can learn from what happened in Illinois, where third-party audits won't begin until 2028.
We don't have time for slow implementation.
I think New York can show that government can move with speed that this demands, diagnose the problem, and put safeguards in place quickly.
Let's give these frontier labs the regulations they say they want at a speed that makes sense for New Yorkers.
Independent third-party audits before deployment, including algorithmic bias, mandatory reporting for incidents and near misses, a required override switch, whistleblowers, and clear development.
Developer liability for harm.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for your testimony.
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