NYC Chatbot Flunks City Law 101: An AI Misadventure

Remember that ambitious kid in class who volunteered for everything but had no idea what the assignment was about? Well, if you’ve met NYC’s official chatbot, you’ll get what I mean. Despite its grand introduction last October under Mayor Eric Adams’ bold “New York City Artificial Intelligence Plan,” it seems this chatbot needs a few extra tutoring sessions (read: significant adjustments) on city laws. But there’s more to the story – here’s the tea.

Key Points:

• The NYPD introduced the MyCity chatbot as part of Mayor Eric Adams’ “New York City Artificial Intelligence Plan” last October.
• Despite its flashy introduction and ambitious agenda, the chatbot seems to be in a state of confusion – more like your grandmother trying to use Instagram for the first time. By that, we mean it has little to no understanding of the City laws, it was designed to explain.
• Several local business owners and landlords who had interactions with the bot reported disparities between its answers and the actual city laws, which are causing more headaches than solutions. It’s like they’ve put Basil Fawlty in charge of communication with its mixups and misunderstandings.

Final Thoughts

It seems what the city might need is a more refined, well-educated AI system that really gets the nuance of the whole beautiful legal mess that we call city laws. Or, at the very least, an AI system that actually knows what it is supposed to do. Yes, we know that AI isn’t perfect and often invokes the “I’m still learning” card, but this time, we need to pull out the “Must try harder” report card. We all appreciate a good try, but NYC’s AI venture seems to be a case of running before you even crawl.

And remember, the only thing worse than an AI that gives wrong answers? One that pretends it knows them all. So for now, NYC needs to hit the books, but there’s always hope for a better AI tomorrow: fingers crossed, the next one doesn’t show up suggesting hot dogs as a solution for tax issues.