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Richard Cockett, a senior editor, discusses history’s best special operations with an SAS officer

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This article is co-reported with THE CITY, a non-profit newsroom that serves the people of New York. Sign up for its newsletter, The Scoop.

In a press conference this week on New York City’s $12 billion budget gap, Mayor Zohran Mamdani zeroed in on the previous administration’s artificial intelligence chatbot as one of “a number of different things we’re going to pursue for savings.”

The chatbot, which was released by the Eric Adams administration in fall of 2023, was meant to provide business owners with an accessible way to check city rules and regulations. But as first documented by The Markup and THE CITY, the bot provided answers that, if followed, would lead to illegal behavior by businesses, like taking a cut of employees’ tips.

A spokesperson for the mayor, Dora Pekec, confirmed in a text message that the new administration plans to take down the chatbot. She said a member of the Mamdani transition team had seen reporting on the bot from The Markup and THE CITY and presented it to the mayor as a possible place to save funds. 

At the press conference, Mamdani blamed Adams for the budget shortfall, saying he had been handed “a poisoned chalice.” To close the deficit, he said he would raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations and look “under the hood” of the city’s budget for potential savings. 

When pressed by reporters on what he might cut, he singled out the chatbot.

“The previous administration had an AI chatbot that was functionally unusable,” Mamdani said. “It was costing the administration around half a million dollars. That, in and of itself, is not something that can bridge this kind of a gap, but it’s an indication of the ways in which money has been spent while refusing to account for the actual costs of what these programs are.”

The bot, built using Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, was part of an ambitious overhaul of digital services in New York called MyCity. The project was meant to streamline access to government but was criticized for relying on outside contractors. 

It wasn’t clear how much it cost to maintain the chatbot. Just building the bot’s foundations reportedly cost nearly $600,000, close to the figure Mamdani provided. Pekec said they didn’t yet have a date for taking down the bot. 

A broken bot

Testing by The Markup and THE CITY in 2024 showed that, despite promises from the Adams administration, the chatbot would confidently provide incorrect and potentially harmful information to visitors, even on high-stakes topics.

When asked about housing policy, for example, the bot suggested landlords could discriminate against tenants with Section 8 vouchers. Despite being an intended resource for business owners, the bot didn’t know the minimum wage, and told users it was fine to refuse to accept cash for payment despite a city law to the contrary, enacted in 2020.

After The Markup and THE CITY’s initial report was published, readers continued peppering the bot with sometimes farcical questions, which it continued failing to answer properly. The Adams administration defended the bot, saying it would improve over time. 

“We’re identifying what the problems are, we’re gonna fix them, and we’re going to have the best chatbot system on the globe,” Adams said at a press conference. “People are going to come and watch what we’re doing in New York City.”

City administrators soon added disclaimers to the bot advising users to “not use its responses as legal or professional advice.” They also improved some of the bot’s answers, but also appeared to limit the kinds of questions the tool was willing to answer. 

Today, the bot advises visitors to “ask an NYC government question only” and cautions that “responses may occasionally produce inaccurate or incomplete content.” Visitors must agree to accept the bot’s limitations before using it.

Update (Feb. 4, 2026): The city has taken down the chatbot, writing on the bot’s web page that its “beta test has ended” and directing visitors to NYC.gov for government information.

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O colonialismo, enquanto sistema de dominação política, econômica e cultural, foi historicamente justificado por ideologias de superioridade. Diferentemente dos séculos passados, hoje ele não se manifesta apenas pela exploração de recursos naturais e da força de trabalho, mas se materializa também na coleta massiva de informações e dados para o desenvolvimento de tecnologias. Esses dados, concentrados nas mãos de grandes corporações do Norte Global, passam a operar segundo interesses políticos e econômicos que aprofundam desigualdades sociais e flertam com ideologias autoritárias.

Como superar esse colonialismo digital e de dados? Existe um caminho para o Brasil garantir sua soberania digital? Essas são algumas das questões levantadas neste episódio do Pauta Pública, que conta com a participação de Sérgio Amadeu. Sociólogo e professor da UFABC, ele é referência no debate sobre tecnologia e sociedade. Amadeu já esteve à frente do Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia da Informação e do Comitê Gestor da Internet no Brasil, além de apresentar o podcast Tecnopolítica.

Ouça agora mesmo o episódio completo e deixe sua opinião nos comentários. 

Saiba que você pode ser aliado da Agência Pública e colaborar com esse trabalho. Saiba mais em apoie.apublica.org ou faça um pix de qualquer valor para contato@apublica.org.
Contamos com seu apoio!

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Quem foi Miró da Muribeca? Neste episódio do 451 MHz, a colunista Bruna Beber recebe o escritor e biógrafo Wellington de Melo em um passeio pela vida e pelos versos do poeta pernambucano, morto em 2022. Autor de Estou Quase Pronto: Uma Biografia de Miró da Muribeca (Cepe), Melo conta como João Flávio Cordeiro da Silva se tornou o poeta performático que saiu do bairro da Muribeca, em Recife, e rodou o Brasil recitando poemas sobre a vida urbana e a exclusão social.

Apoio: Lei Rouanet – Incentivo a Projetos Culturais

Assine a Quatro Cinco Um por R$ 10/mês: https://bit.ly/Assine451

Seja um Ouvinte Entusiasta e apoie o 451 MHz: https://bit.ly/Assine451

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