Elon Musk’s SpaceX agreed Tuesday to testify before the New York City Council about AI-related safety risks after being slapped with a subpoena, according to Council Speaker Julie Menin.
The tech giant said it would send a rep this coming Friday after it ditched an initial AI safety hearing featuring virtual appearances by officials from rivals Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Meta last week. Safety experts and whistleblowers such as ex-Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon showed up, too. Menin, a Manhattan Dem, called SpaceX’s absence from the marathon session “unacceptable.”
“New Yorkers and the public at large deserve to hear directly from the companies developing this powerful technology about the safeguards they are putting in place to protect people from harm and how they will be held accountable when those safeguards fail,” she said in a statement.
“Self-regulation is not enough, and I am glad that we have now secured SpaceXAI’s commitment to appear before the public in the coming week,” Menin added.
The City Council first issued a subpoena compelling SpaceX’s testimony on Sept. 28, shortly after the other four companies agreed to participate in the first hearing. After SpaceX ignored the demand, the body warned it would file a petition with the New York State Supreme Court to enforce the subpoena unless SpaceX complied.
It’s unclear who will represent SpaceX at the second hearing. The Post has reached out to company representatives for comment.
Councilwoman Carmen De La Rosa, who chairs the body’s committee on technology, alleged that SpaceX had “tried to circumvent our city’s public conversation on the dangers of AI.”
“With the proliferation of Elon Musk’s technology at the federal level, it is even more important they come to the discussion with robust context about data privacy, safeguards, and whistleblower protections,” the Manhattan Dem said in a statement.
Coxon – who quit Anthropic last month while warning of a “greater than 10% chance” that AI wipes out humanity – told Council members last week that the AI industry was being “extremely reckless given the stakes.”
“From my experience, the companies are being extremely reckless given the stakes,” the youthful whistleblower said at the hearing. “The companies run on a startup mindset: move fast, break things, fix them later. That works for a photo sharing app. It does not work for building the most powerful technology ever built.”
SpaceX, which consists of Musk’s rocket and satellite business as well as his xAI artificial intelligence unit, went public in June.