In a press conference this week on New York City’s $12 billion budget gap, Mayor Zohran Mamdani zeroed in on the previous administration’s artificial intelligence chatbot as one of “a number of different things we’re going to pursue for savings.”
In a press conference this week on New York City’s $12 billion budget gap, Mayor Zohran Mamdani zeroed in on the previous administration’s artificial intelligence chatbot as one of “a number of different things we’re going to pursue for savings.”
Often the promised cost savings never materialise, because when the chatbot fucks up, it’s humans who need to clean up the mess.
it’s short sighted, because an ai chat bot that can answer basic surface level questions 24/7 should absolutely be more cost effective than having staff field the same questions. You can have half of them be the escalation point and assign different work to the other half. For the population of NYC this is the right approach.
However I would accept that the previous administration was corrupt and overpaid an incompetent contractor. Mamdani should restart the project, not scrap it.