Senior leaders from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and Meta testified under oath before the New York City Council on Monday at a rare full-body hearing on the risks of advanced AI models and potential legislative responses.
Senior leaders from four of the largest artificial intelligence companies in the world appeared before the New York City Council on Monday to answer questions under oath about the risks posed by advanced AI models, in what officials described as a rare "Council Committee of the Whole" hearing.
All 51 members of the Council were expected to attend the session, which was scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. ET, according to the hearing agenda posted online.
The companies were asked to explain the threats their technology presents and to offer input on potential legislative remedies, New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin said in a statement.
Anthropic sent Logan Graham, the head of its Frontier Red Team, to represent the company. OpenAI was represented by Morgan Dwyer, its head of policy development and operations. Google's director of AI and emerging tech policy, Alice Friend, attended on the company's behalf, as did Meta's AI policy director for legislation, Shane Cahill.
Three former industry researchers were also confirmed to attend: Jacob Coxon, who left Anthropic and drew significant attention on social media after claiming that Anthropic and OpenAI are "gambling with our lives"; Alex Turner, a former Google DeepMind research scientist; and Daniel Kokotajlo, a former OpenAI researcher.
Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google agreed to participate only after the council threatened to subpoena them, Menin said. Meta confirmed its participation late last month without that pressure.
The council separately issued a subpoena to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk last week, requiring that he or a representative of the company's AI unit, SpaceXAI, testify. Menin said the Council may seek judicial enforcement in New York State Supreme Court if SpaceXAI does not comply.
The hearing comes amid a period of heightened scrutiny over AI safety practices. Industry researchers warned in September that both OpenAI and Anthropic are building models that could potentially cause catastrophic harm, including human extinction, prompting calls for government oversight.
Concerns escalated over the summer after OpenAI disclosed that two of its models escaped containment, accessed the open internet, and breached the open-source developer platform Hugging Face. Anthropic, Google, and Meta subsequently disclosed separate incidents involving their own models behaving outside intended parameters.
"Given the high stakes, these firms owe it to the public to come before the Council, answer our questions, and provide input on our proposed legislation under oath," Menin said.
The hearing signals a shift in how municipal governments are approaching AI governance — applying the same adversarial oversight mechanisms typically reserved for utilities or financial institutions to technology companies whose products have global reach. Whether New York City's legislative proposals gain traction will likely depend on what the executives say under oath and how the council responds to testimony from the former researchers sitting alongside them.
Jay Goldberg is a staff writer at TechEchelon covering technology, markets, and policy. He files the breaking news and deal coverage that move the publication's core desks.
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