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City officials added ” “Beta” logo.
The Markup reported last week that the city’s digital assistant, MyCity Chatbot, has been providing users with misleading, incomplete and sometimes outright false information. For example, as of Wednesday, the bot was still telling users that bosses could “take” employees’ tips, contradicting workplace laws set by New York City and the U.S. Department of Labor.
Other misinformation spread by chatbots involved concealing funeral home pricing, operating cashless stores in cities and requirements for landlords to accept government vouchers.
Rebecca Williams, senior privacy and data governance strategist at the American Civil Liberties Union, told StateScoop that leaving flawed chatbots online is “inexcusable.”
“I think this is a very mature example of the unspeakable harm [of AI],” Williams said. “Let’s say someone uses a chatbot and they try to know what to do if their landlord doesn’t pay for repairs, but they get the wrong answer and then they don’t enforce their rights. But how do you measure that? It’s even hard to quantify the monetary impact. People want accurate and authoritative information that will help them when they visit government websites.”
Even before adding the beta label—a widely-publicized practice in the tech industry that software is not finished—the site included a warning: “Responses may sometimes produce inaccurate or incomplete content. Verify at NYC.gov and MyCity Business Answer.”
When asked at a press conference on Tuesday why the city had not shut down the chatbot for repairs, New York Mayor Eric Adams expressed hesitation to a reporter who said the answers the technology provided were “very wrong.” ”.
“Something is wrong and we have to fix it. … Any time you use technology, you need to put it in a real-world context to solve problems,” Adams said. “You can’t live in a lab. You can’t stay in a lab forever. You have to be willing to say I’m going to put it in the real universe to get to the next level of perfection. Anyone who knows anything about technology knows it’s How it’s done.”
When StateScoop asked the chatbot on Wednesday whether companies “have the right to refuse service to violent customers,” the chatbot answered in the negative.
“No, businesses have no right to refuse service to violent customers. New York City has enacted the Business Owners Bill of Rights to ensure that business owners provide all customers with courteous and professional treatment.” New York’s chatbot responded.
“Only the people who are scared sit back and say, ‘Oh, this didn’t go the way we wanted. Now we have to completely run away from it. I don’t live like that,'” Adams said Tuesday. “Each evolution builds a better product until the product becomes a great, perfect product. And it’s never perfect.”
Adams’ office did not respond to StateScoop’s request for comment.
“I don’t know what the exact policy solution is,” said the ACLU’s Williams, “but I do know they shouldn’t be posting this online. Or once they hear there’s a problem, they should fix it. situation and take it offline.”
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