Former NY Governor Cuomo's AI-Assisted Housing Plan Sparks Controversy in Mayoral Race

Cuomo Announces New Housing Plan, With a Hint of ChatGPT

For former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the release of his housing plan on Sunday was to be a major policy moment in his campaign to become mayor of New York City, which is facing its worst housing crunch in more than 50 years. He spoke about it at a Sunday morning church service; promised to build and preserve 500,000 units of housing, most of them "affordable"; and prominently noted his years working as housing secretary for the Clinton administration. But the impact of his plan was diluted by a distinctly 21st-century imbroglio, one involving artificial intelligence, voice-to-text software and questionable proofreading skills. The 29-page housing plan included incoherent babble and a ChatGPT-derived hyperlink to a news article, as was first reported by Hell Gate, a local news site. The episode, in its apparent carelessness, fueled criticism of Mr. Cuomo, who, despite having quickly accumulated more than $1.5 million in fund-raising dollars, has limited his media availability and allowed his campaign to rest heavily on name recognition. "I did the hard work to pass city laws that will create 120,000 new housing units," Adrienne Adams, the New York City Council speaker who is among eight prominent Democrats challenging Mr. Cuomo in the mayoral primary, wrote on social media. "Andrew Cuomo asked ChatGPT what his housing policy should be. Guess someone does need on-the-job training." The Cuomo campaign said the policy paper was written by Paul Francis, a policy adviser who previously served as budget director for Gov. Eliot Spitzer, director of state operations for Gov. David Paterson and director of agency redesign and efficiency for Mr. Cuomo. Mr. Francis had his left arm amputated in 2012, and in an interview on Monday said that he relied on voice recognition software. That, he said, explains the several instances of incoherent language in the policy brief. "It's very hard to type with one hand," he said. "So I dictate, and what happens when you dictate is that sometimes things get garbled. And try as I might to see them when I proofread, sometimes they get by me." Mr. Francis acknowledged using ChatGPT to do research, much as people use Google, he said. The fact that the "ChatGPT" reference in the paper is contained in a link to an article by Gothamist merely demonstrates that he would never use artificial intelligence for research without checking the citations, he said. "It clearly was not a writing tool; it was a research tool," Mr. Francis said. Among the virtually incomprehensible passages was this one: "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." By Monday morning, that paragraph and two others had been edited, but the hyperlink containing the ChatGPT reference remained. Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for the Cuomo campaign, argued that the instances of muddled language indicate that the paper was not, in fact, written by artificial intelligence. "If it was written by ChatGPT, we wouldn't have had the errors," Mr. Azzopardi said. Housing is one of the primary issues animating the mayor's race as New York City faces its worst housing crisis in more than half a century. In January, more than 120,000 New Yorkers slept in shelters, including more than 40,000 children, according to a tracker maintained by Coalition for the Homeless. Fully employed adults live in homeless shelters because they are unable to afford rent. Lotteries for the subsidized units that do get built attract thousands of applicants. Mr. Cuomo's housing strategy was of particular interest because of his background. While Mr. Cuomo presided as governor over the tightening of the housing market, he also created an organization to serve the homeless and chaired a mayoral commission on homelessness during David N. Dinkins's administration. Mr. Cuomo's plan, called "Addressing New York's Housing Crisis," calls for building and preserving 500,000 units of housing over 10 years -- a strategy similar to that proposed by the current mayor, Eric Adams, in 2022. Mr. Cuomo said he would lean hard on tax incentives for developers, commit more funding to subsidize affordable housing, and invest pension funds into housing development.

Cuomo's Affordable Housing Plan for His New York City Mayoral Bid Was, at Least in Part, Written by AI

The documents contain wonky language and footnotes sourced by ChatGPT. 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. But the end of the plan raised questions with local news site HellGateNYC, which found passages riddled with choppy language and grammatical errors. Is 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. In admitting the use of AI, a spokesperson for Mr. Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, said ChatGPT is "a research tool that everyone uses like Google and was sourced to a press article. The section you're referencing was initially written with voice recognition software." Housing advocates in 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.'"