Who Protects the Consumer in the Age of AI? The debate behind New York Senate Bill S7263
For centuries, the most powerful institutions in society have held a quiet advantage over the public: they understood the systems that governed everyday life. Law, medicine, regulation and bureaucracy all developed languages and procedures that ordinary citizens rarely encountered until they found themselves entangled in them. When that happened, the citizen typically depended on intermediaries—lawyers, professionals and officials—to interpret the system on their behalf. Artificial intelligence has begun to change that dynamic. Large language models can translate dense legal filings, bureaucratic correspondence and technical documentation into plain language explanations. For the first time, an ordinary person navigating a complex institution may be able to ask a machine: What does this mean? What options exist? What is happening here? This technological shift has triggered an increasingly intense debate in legislatures around the world. One of the clearest examples is New York Sena...
