New York

How New York Is Regulating A.I.

Published

2 years ago

June 22, 2023

Good morning. It’s Thursday. We’ll look at why New York City has emerged as a modest pioneer in A.I. regulation. We’ll also find out about a property tax exemption for a secret society in Brooklyn that has ties to the Underground Railroad.

Amid the cacophony about artificial intelligence, my colleague Steve Lohr says that New York City has become a pioneer in A.I. regulation.

The city is taking a focused approach to rules on how companies can use A.I. in hiring and promotion decisions — which could have life-changing consequences for job candidates or workers aspiring to rise through the ranks. The rules flesh out a law enacted in 2021 that covers only applicants and employees who live in New York City, but labor experts expect it to influence practices nationally. The city is set to begin enforcing the law on July 5.

Automation accelerated the changing nature of job interviews during the pandemic, with chatbots increasingly conducting interviews and résumé scanners prioritizing applications after going through them for keywords.

The city law says that companies that use A.I. software in hiring must be clear about it, telling job seekers in advance that an automated system will be used. The law also requires companies to have independent auditors test the technology annually for bias in race, ethnicity and gender.

The city’s focused approach represents an important front in A.I. regulation as policymakers wrestle with applying lofty-sounding principles. Robert Holden, a Democrat from Queens who was the chairman of the City Council technology committee when the law was passed, called it “a significant regulatory success toward ensuring that A.I. technology is used ethically and responsibly.”

But it has become a target of criticism from public interest advocates who say it was watered down and from business groups that consider it impractical.

“This was a wasted opportunity,” Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a civil rights and privacy group, told me. “New York had the chance to push back against this dangerous and discriminatory technology, but these new rules don’t go far enough.”

Julia Stoyanovich, an associate professor at New York University and the director of its Center for Responsible A.I., said last month that she was concerned that loopholes in the law could weaken its impact. “But it’s much better than not having a law,” she said. “And until you try to regulate, you won’t learn how.”

The law assesses an “impact ratio,” a calculation of the effect of using the software on a protected group of job candidates. The law does not look at how an algorithm makes decisions, a concept known as “explainability.” “The focus becomes the output of the algorithm, not the working of the algorithm,” said Ashley Casovan, executive director of the Responsible AI Institute, which is developing certifications for the safe use of A.I. applications in the workplace, health care and finance.

Businesses, too, have criticized the law. The Software Alliance — a trade group that includes Microsoft, SAP and Workday — called independent audits of A.I. “not feasible” because the industry has yet to draft standards or organize professional oversight bodies.

Cahn, of the surveillance technology group, raised broader objections.

“We don’t need auditing requirements, we need a ban,” he told me. “This is technology that we don’t have the tools to reliably audit, and I’m fearful these rules give companies the power to give themselves a clean bill of health. With financial audits, we at least agree with a lot of the basics for what constitutes a good audit. No one really agrees on what it takes to audit a lot of these systems.”

Weather

Expect rain, with temps near the high 60s. Prepare for possible showers and thunderstorms at night. Temps are steady around the mid-60s.

ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING

In effect until Wednesday (Eid al-Adha).

The latest Metro news

‘A lifeline’ for the home of the United Order of Tents

“It’s a lifeline,” said Jacques David, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society.

He was talking about the city’s decision to grant a property tax exemption to the United Order of Tents, a secret society of Black women that was organized after the Civil War and whose New York headquarters is a striking mansion in Brooklyn. But the group’s membership had dwindled, and the mansion needs work.

“What this honestly means is that the Tents will be able to save the headquarters building,” said David, who represented the nonprofit group in challenging the city’s earlier denial of an exemption. “The organization is identified by this building, and so the organization will be preserved. They’re already undergoing a renaissance. All these things will flourish now.”

He said the group had been assessed about $265,000 in property taxes by the city, which mistakenly considered the house vacant. City Councilman Justin Brannan, the chairman of the Finance Committee, said he stepped in after he heard about the problems.

“I was morally obligated to get involved,” he said. “I could not stand by and allow the City of New York to essentially evict an organization with such deep historical and cultural significance.” The group in Brooklyn, officially the United Order of Tents Eastern District No. 3, bought the mansion in 1945.

When my colleague Dodai Stewart wrote about the Tents last winter, the house had fallen into disrepair, with boarded-up windows, crumbling plaster, peeling paint and troubling water damage. She wrote that the Tents had been fighting real estate tax battles for almost 10 years and risked a tax lien that could have cost them the property. They sold part of their lot to a developer and spent the money on repairs that did not go smoothly.

David said the Tents were now looking to stabilize the building — and begin to apply for program grants. He said it had already received one totaling $100,000 from the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund run by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

“Our Bedford-Stuyvesant headquarters has served the community for over 75 years,” Essie Gregory, the president of the Tents, said in a statement, “and with this tax exemption, we will be able to continue our legacy for many more years to come.”

METROPOLITAN diary

$20 bill

Dear Diary:

It was a beautiful, breezy Friday night, beautiful enough that I decided to walk across town after work instead of taking the L.

Waiting to cross Second Avenue, I noticed a woman getting out of a car. Then I saw a $20 bill float through the air into the intersection.

The woman looked stricken. Cars were streaming down Second. The bill danced around taxis and trucks. Did she dare jump into traffic? Was it worth it?

Everyone waiting at the intersection watched the woman and her $20 bill, mesmerized. I wondered what I would do if it were my $20 caught in the wind.

New York

Large Blaze Ravages Bronx Apartment Building, Leaving Many Displaced

Published

8 hours ago

January 10, 2025

Press Room

Large Blaze Ravages Bronx Apartment Building, Leaving Many Displaced

Dozens of families were looking for shelter after a large fire broke out at an apartment building in the Bronx early Friday, injuring at least seven people, the Fire Department said. There were no fatalities or life-threatening injuries, according to officials.

About 250 firefighters and emergency medical responders rushed to a six-story residential building on Wallace Avenue near Arnow Avenue after a fire was reported there just before 2 a.m., the Fire Department said. The blaze on the top floor was elevated to a five-alarm fire about an hour later, it said.

Several dozen firefighters were still gathered outside the building at around 10 a.m. Many windows on the top floor were blown out and some had shards of glass hanging in place that resembled jagged teeth. Smoke continued to climb from the building as a firefighter on a ladder hosed the roof.

The fire was brought under control shortly before 2 p.m., according to fire officials.

The seven people who were injured included five firefighters, the department said in an email. One person was treated at the scene but declined to be taken to a hospital.

A spokeswoman for the Police Department said earlier that some people had suffered smoke inhalation injuries.

Robert S. Tucker, the fire commissioner, said during a news conference that it was a miracle that there had been no serious injuries or fatalities. Officials said that all of the apartments on the building’s top floor were destroyed.

Firefighters blasted water at the smoke and flames pouring out of the upper floors and roof, according to videos posted online by the Fire Department and television news outlets. Heavy winds had fueled the blaze, the department said.

The cause of the fire was under investigation, officials said.

The Red Cross was at the scene helping residents that were displaced by the fire, and a temporary shelter had been set up at the Bennington School on Adee Avenue nearby. Doreen Thomann-Howe, the chief executive of the American Red Cross Greater New York Region, said during the news conference that 66 families had already registered to receive assistance, including lodging. She said she expected that number to increase.

Juan Cabrera and his family were among those seeking help at the Bennington School. Mr. Cabrera said that he and his family had not heard a fire alarm but had instead heard glass breaking as residents climbed out of windows. He said he had also heard people race across the hall one flight above him while others screamed “Get out!”

Mr. Cabrera, 47, said he had smelled smoke and woke up his daughter, Rose, 13. He and his wife, Aurora Tavera, grabbed their IDs, passports and cellphones, and the family left the building.

“I felt desperate,” Ms. Taverna, 32, said.

“Thank God we are still alive,” said Mr. Cabrera, who works as a school aide and custodian and has lived in the building for five years. “The material stuff you can get back, but we have our family,” he said.

Louis Montalvo, 55, was also among those seeking help. He said firefighters banged on his door at around 3 a.m. and that he had smelled smoke.

“I am grateful to be around,” Mr. Montalvo said, as he stood outside of the temporary shelter. He was still wearing his felt pajama pants, which had snowmen printed on them.

Vanessa L. Gibson, the Bronx borough president, said she was “so grateful” there had been no fatalities from the fire.

The last major apartment fire in the Bronx occurred in 2022, and resulted in 17 deaths, which experts said were entirely preventable. Self-closing doors in the building did not work properly, allowing smoke to escape the apartment where the fire started and rapidly fill the structure’s 19 stories.

New York

New York’s Chinese Dissidents Thought He Was an Ally. He Was a Spy.

Published

16 hours ago

January 10, 2025

Press Room

New York’s Chinese Dissidents Thought He Was an Ally. He Was a Spy.

The Chinese government’s paranoia about overseas dissidents can seem strange, considering the enormous differences in power between exiled protesters who organize marches in America and their mighty homeland, a geopolitical and economic superpower whose citizens they have almost no ability to mobilize. But to those familiar with the Chinese Communist Party, the government’s obsession with dissidents, no matter where in the world they are, is unsurprising. “Regardless of how the overseas dissident community is dismissed outside of China, its very existence represents a symbol of hope for many within China,” Wang Dan, a leader of the Tiananmen Square protests who spent years in prison before being exiled to the United States in 1998, told me. “For the Chinese Communist Party, the hope for change among the people is itself a threat. Therefore, they spare no effort in suppressing and discrediting the overseas dissident community — to extinguish this hope in the hearts of people at home.”

To understand the party’s fears about the risks posed by dissidents abroad, it helps to know the history of revolutions in China. “Historically, the groups that have overthrown the incumbent government or regime in China have often spent a lot of time overseas and organized there,” says Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of China studies at Johns Hopkins University. The leader Sun Yat-sen, who played an important role in the 1911 revolution that dethroned the Qing dynasty and led eventually to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, spent several periods of his life abroad, during which he engaged in effective fund-raising and political coordination. The Communist Party’s own rise to power in 1949 was partly advanced by contributions from leaders who were living overseas. “They are very sensitive to that potential,” Weiss says.

“What the Chinese government and the circle of elites that are running China right now fear the most is not the United States, with all of its military power, but elements of unrest within their own society that could potentially topple the Chinese Communist Party,” says Adam Kozy, a cybersecurity consultant who worked on Chinese cyberespionage cases when he was at the F.B.I. Specifically, Chinese authorities worry about a list of threats — collectively referred to as the “five poisons” — that pose a risk to the stability of Communist rule: the Uyghurs, the Tibetans, followers of the Falun Gong movement, supporters of Taiwanese independence and those who advocate for democracy in China. As a result, the Chinese government invests great effort in combating these threats, which involves collecting intelligence about overseas dissident groups and dampening their influence both within China and on the international stage.

Controlling dissidents, regardless of where they are, is essential to China’s goal of projecting power to its own citizens and to the world, according to Charles Kable, who served as an assistant director in the F.B.I.’s national security branch before retiring from the bureau at the end of 2022. “If you have a dissident out there who is looking back at China and pointing out problems that make the entire Chinese political apparatus look bad, it will not stand,” Kable says.

The leadership’s worries about such individuals were evident to the F.B.I. right before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Kable told me, describing how the Chinese worked to ensure that the running of the Olympic flame through San Francisco would not be disrupted by protesters. “And so, you had the M.S.S. and its collaborators deployed in San Francisco just to make sure that the five poisons didn’t get in there and disrupt the optic of what was to be the best Olympics in history,” Kable says. During the run, whose route was changed at the last minute to avoid protesters, Chinese authorities “had their proxies in the community line the streets and also stand back from the streets, looking around to see who might be looking to cause trouble.”

New York

Hochul Seeks to Limit Private-Equity Ownership of Homes in New York

Published

1 day ago

January 9, 2025

Press Room

Hochul Seeks to Limit Private-Equity Ownership of Homes in New York

Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York on Thursday proposed several measures that would restrict hedge funds and private-equity firms from buying up large numbers of single-family homes, the latest in a string of populist proposals she intends to include in her State of the State address next week.

The governor wants to prevent institutional investors from bidding on properties in the first 75 days that they are on the market. Her plan would also remove certain tax benefits, such as interest deductions, when the homes are purchased.

The proposals reflect a nationwide effort by mostly Democratic lawmakers to discourage large firms from crowding out individuals or families from the housing market by paying far above market rate and in cash, and then leasing the homes or turning them into short-term rentals.

Activists and some politicians have argued that this trend has played a role in soaring prices and low vacancy rates — though low housing production is widely viewed as the main driver of those problems.

If Ms. Hochul was inviting a fight with the real estate interests who have backed her in the past, she did not seem concerned. She even borrowed a line from Jimmy McMillan, who ran long-shot candidacies for governor and mayor as the founder of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party.

“The cost of living is just too damn high — especially when it comes to the sky-high rents and mortgages New Yorkers pay every month,” Ms. Hochul said in a written statement.

James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, said his team would review the proposal, but characterized it as “another example of policy that will stifle investment in housing in New York.”

The plan — the specifics of which will be negotiated with the Legislature — is one of several recent proposals the governor has made with the goal of addressing the state’s affordability crisis. Voters have expressed frustration about the high costs of housing and basic goods in the state. This discontent has led to political challenges for Ms. Hochul, who is likely to face rivals in the 2026 Democratic primary and in the general election.

In 2022, five of the largest investors in the United States owned 2 percent of the country’s single-family rental homes, most of them in Sun Belt and Southern states, according to a recent report from the federal Government Accountability Office. The report stated that it was “unclear how these investors affected homeownership opportunities or tenants because many related factors affect homeownership — e.g., market conditions, demographic factors and lending conditions.”

Researchers at Harvard University found that “a growing share of rental properties are owned by business entities and medium- and large-scale rental operators.”

State officials were not able to offer a complete picture of how widespread the practice was in New York. They said local officials in several upstate cities had told them about investors buying up dozens of homes at a time and turning them into rentals.

The New York Times reported in 2023 that investment firms were buying smaller buildings in places like Brooklyn and Queens from families and smaller landlords.

Ms. Hochul’s concern is that these purchases make it harder for first-time home buyers to gain a foothold in the market and can lead to more rental price gouging.

“Shadowy private-equity giants are buying up the housing supply in communities across New York, leaving everyday homeowners with nowhere to turn,” she said in a statement on Thursday. “I’m proposing new laws and policy changes to put the American dream of owning a home within reach for more New Yorkers than ever before.”

Cracking down on corporate landlords became a prominent talking point in last year’s presidential election. On the campaign trail, Vice President Kamala Harris called on Congress to pass previously introduced legislation eliminating tax benefits for large investors that purchase large numbers of homes.

“It can make it impossible then for regular people to be able to buy or even rent a home,” Ms. Harris said last summer.

In August, Representative Pat Ryan, Democrat of New York, called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate price gouging by private-equity firms in the housing market. He cited a study that estimated that private-equity firms “are expected to control 40 percent of the U.S. single-family rental market by 2030.”

Statehouses across the country have recently looked at ways to tackle corporate homeownership. One effort in Nevada, which passed the Legislature but was vetoed by Gov. Joe Lombardo, proposed capping the number of units a corporation could buy in a calendar year. It was opposed by local chambers of commerce and the state’s homebuilders association.

A bill was introduced in the Minnesota State Legislature that would ban the conversion of homes owned by corporations into rentals. It has yet to come up for a vote.

At the federal level, Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, and Representative Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington, introduced joint legislation that would force hedge funds to sell all the single-family homes they own over 10 years.