If no AI lab can say how likely a catastrophe is or who pays, should a city be allowed to decide for them?
Four frontier AI labs testified under oath in New York and could not quantify the odds of a catastrophe, name an insurer, or say who would be responsible. When the companies cannot answer those questions and Washington opts for voluntary self-policing, is a city council the right body to build the accountability layer itself, or does patchwork local regulation create more problems than it solves?
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In today’s episode of Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts, dated October 6, 2026, the hosts dug into the New York City Council hearing where OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta answered four plain questions under oath and essentially said can’t say, don’t know, unclear, and not sure. The episode argues the real story is the liability gap: a product sold in the city with less oversight than a nail salon, and no one willing to say who pays when it fails. The council’s proposed kill switch, third-party validation rule and whistleblower bounty are one attempt to fill that gap, but the subpoena Musk’s SpaceXAI ignored may be the true test of whether a city has the reach to enforce any of it. Listen to the full episode and tell us where you land: should accountability for frontier AI start at city hall, or does it have to come from the top down?
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