Critics Claim Cuomo’s Affordable Housing Plan for His New York City Mayoral Bid Was, in Part, Written by AI

A chunk of Andrew Cuomo’s newly released mayoral plan is alleged to have been written by ChatGPT.On Saturday, Mr. Cuomo’s campaign team released his “Addressing New York’s Housing Crisis” plan — a 30-page, mostly cut-and-dried presentation to increase affordable housing within the five boroughs as well as listing his past accomplishments at Albany. Yet the end of the plan raised questions with local news site HellGateNYC, which found passages riddled with choppy language and grammatical errors.In a section titled, “Appoint Rent Guidelines Board Members Who Will Make Decisions Bbjectively [sic],” there are several awkward statements.“Nevertheless, several candidates for mayor this year have either called directly for a rent increase or for other measures that would tilt the scale toward lower rent increases. This is a politically convenient posture, but to be in. Victory if landlords — small landlords in particular — are simply unable to maintain their buildings,” reads one passage.“Governor Cuomo is committed to making appointments to the Rent Guidelines Board will make decisions based on the evidence in the criteria set forth in the law, which are designed to balance the symbol of rent control that tightly limits rent increases with landlords’ needs to keep up with costs such as maintenance, insurance, taxes and utilities, that need to be met if landlords are going to be able to maintain their property and, at the extreme, keep affordable housing units on the market,” reads another section.Footnotes also reference a 2024 article from Gothamist that appeared to be sourced by the AI engine.“Citing a footnote linking to a news article found by ChatGPT, is not the same as using AI to craft a policy,” Rich Azzopardi, a spokesperson for Mr. Cuomo said in a statement to the New York Sun. “Using AI for basic research and making grammatical or spelling mistakes is very relatable for most New Yorkers. Candidates attempting to seize on this to distract from their own lack of credentials, vision and electoral support are both transparent and sad.”Mr. Azzopardi also told the Sun that the portions of the report were written with a text-to-speech program separate from ChatGPT and were the cause for the grammatical errors. Housing advocates at New York City took issue with the haphazard report.“What is Governor Cuomo doing with all this real estate money if he can’t even hire a proofreader?” a housing activist and the director of the New York State Tenant Bloc, Cea Weaver, said in a statement to HellGateNYC. “His campaign is so out of touch that he is outsourcing housing policy to a robot.”“But New Yorkers don’t need ChatGPT to tell us that we need a rent freeze — it’s ‘bbjective.’”

Critics Claim Cuomo’s Affordable Housing Plan for His New York City Mayoral Bid Was, in Part, Written by AI

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