Description: New York City's chatbot, launched under Mayor Eric Adams's plan to assist businesses, has been reportedly providing dangerously inaccurate legal advice. The Microsoft-powered bot allegedly informed users that landlords can refuse Section 8 vouchers and that businesses can operate cash-free, among other falsehoods. The city acknowledges the chatbot is a pilot program and commits to improvements while the errors are addressed.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Microsoft and New York City Office of Technology and Innovation developed an AI system deployed by New York City Government and Eric Adams administration, which harmed Eric Adams administration , New York City small business owners , New York City landlords and tenants and New York City employers and employees.
Incident Stats
Incident ID
714
Report Count
2
Incident Date
2024-03-29
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
themarkup.org · 2024
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This article is copublished with Documented, a nonprofit newsroom that covers New York City's immigrant communities, and The City, a non-profit newsroom that serves the people of New York. Sign up for Documented's newsletters and The City's…
qz.com · 2024
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New York City's plan to use AI to help residents and businesses doesn't appear to be going smoothly. In fact, the city's own chatbot is encouraging users to break the law.
The city's Microsoft-powered AI chatbot is giving users false and --…
Variants
A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.
