The person in charge of artificial intelligence policy, Gabriela Castillo Madrid, will testify before the New York City Council on Friday as part of the legislative investigation conducted by that institution into the security of AI.
The hearing held with the City Council's Technology Committee is scheduled to take place at 10 a.m. Eastern Time in the city hall, and Castillo Madrid will attend via video conference.
The aerospace, defense technology, and AI company under Elon Musk initially avoided the request of the city council to attend a hearing on October 5th alongside executives from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta, and ignored the subpoenas. SpaceX agreed to testify earlier this week, after the city council threatened to have a judge enforce the subpoenas.
After a month of intense debates surrounding the risks of the advanced AI model, the city council launched this investigation and hopes to use the testimonies and information discovered during the investigation to guide new regulatory provisions.
According to her LinkedIn profile, before joining SpaceX earlier this year to handle government affairs, Castillo Madrid worked at Musk's social media company X, which is now owned by SpaceX. Prior to that, she spent nearly three years working at the US Department of Commerce.
In February, Musk merged SpaceX with xAI, combining his AI and social networking business with the rocket launch company. Meanwhile, SpaceX still possesses Starlink satellite internet services. This merger has resulted in SpaceX taking control of the AI model, which is being used by several federal agencies, including the Pentagon.
SpaceX went public in June and is currently valued at approximately $2 trillion. In August, SpaceX completed a $60 billion acquisition of Cursor, a programming startup founded by AI.
During the absence from the previous hearings of the New York City Council, SpaceX also avoided directly answering questions from British Member of Parliament Jess Asato. Asato stated at the hearing that she had experienced cyberbullying facilitated by AI.
Asato is suing xAI in the UK, claiming that Grok users created and spread pornographic images of her online without her consent. She is seeking compensation and accusing them of abusing her personal information as well as violating European data protection regulations.
According to BBC, Asato criticized SpaceX for not attending the hearing last week, describing his behavior as "arrogant".
SpaceX did not respond to requests for comments before the meeting.












