New York City Council subpoenas Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI ahead of public hearing

The New York City Council issued a subpoena to SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk on Monday in an effort to compel testimony from the company at a public hearing next week.The hearing is supposed to focus on legislation that imposes severe restrictions on artificial intelligence, including a “kill switch” that would shut down rogue AI models.Council Speaker Julie Menin, who announced the legislation Friday, asked the following technology leaders to participate in or to send a company representative to the councilwide Oct. 5 hearing: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Musk. If they failed to oblige the speaker’s request, the executives would be subpoenaed. Of the five figures, Musk was the only one who did not respond by the subpoena deadline Monday morning.If SpaceXAI still refuses to comply, the council warned it will ask the New York State Supreme Court to intervene.OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic all agreed to appear before the council after Menin threatened subpoenas late last week. Meta confirmed its planned attendance at the hearing before the subpoena threat.The hearing is expected to address the risks posed by AI systems that have concerned lawmakers across various levels of government in the past few weeks.“Leading experts and AI executives themselves are warning about the potentially grave risks of rapidly advancing AI, and governments have a responsibility to act,” Menin said in a statement. “That is exactly what the New York City Council is doing. 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.”Apart from designating a so-called kill switch, the legislation would establish a program that incentivizes whistleblowers to report violations of New York’s AI laws, among other protections and guardrails that the leading AI firms could address.The New York City Council is also expected to hear testimony from leading experts in AI safety, technology, and consumer protection as the legislative body considers the proposed legislation. All 51 members of the council will convene for the hearing.NEW YORK CITY’S NEW AI LEGISLATIVE PACKAGE FEATURES ‘KILL SWITCH’ AND WHISTLEBLOWER INCENTIVEIn its press release, the council cited a report stating that an OpenAI agent attempted to breach an Australian government health website in June. The incident was first revealed by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the U.N. General Assembly last week. Albanese said he met with Altman to discuss the incident. OpenAI notified the Australian government of the breach earlier this month.Over the weekend, an independent research report alleged OpenAI agents tried to access a U.N. website more than 16,000 times between April and June in an attempt to retrieve publicly available data. In doing so, the agents circumvented the website’s security filter. OpenAI has also been linked to the breaches of U.S. government websites, including those for the Education and Commerce departments.