New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani told an audience at The People's AI Assembly in Manhattan on October 19, 2026 that the federal government has shown a 'complete abdication of federal law' on artificial intelligence, urging New Yorkers to resist the idea that AI's rollout is inevitable, TechCrunch reported.
The event, hosted by the AI Now Institute at Webster Hall, featured Mamdani in conversation with actor and activist Ilana Glazer. Mamdani argued the technology's rapid deployment 'is not inevitable' and that public officials should hold AI companies accountable.
He pointed to two of his administration's own measures: a ban on AI use in elementary and middle schools ordered last month, and a policy introduced over the summer requiring landlords, brokers, and real estate platforms to disclose when listing photos or videos are AI-generated - a measure aimed at misleading rental listings.
Mamdani criticized what he called 'reckless adoption of technology without any kind of a reckoning with the limitations of that technology,' citing, as an example, the US military's February strike on a school in Iran; officials involved in the Pentagon's internal investigation told Bloomberg that overreliance on AI in targeting was one factor.
He also contrasted local action with the federal posture: President Trump's Superintelligence Task Force, announced earlier this month, leans on self-regulation by AI companies rather than new federal restrictions.