The New York City Council held a hearing on existential risk from AI on October 6, 2026, with testimony from Jacob Coxon, former DeepMind alignment researcher Alex Turner and former OpenAI researcher Daniel Kakatailo. Coxon had resigned from Anthropic the month before. The council is weighing bills on whistleblower incentives, suits against AI developers, third-party validation before city deployment, licensing AI companies and a kill switch for doomsday scenarios. Company representatives at the hearing said no level of catastrophic risk is acceptable, but economic disruption may bring short-term problems. Speaker Julie Menon said AI cannot self-regulate, and proposals for a kill switch and whistleblower protections remain before the state Congress.