Mamdani Targets $119 Billion Customer-Service Scams as AI Chatbots Trap Users in 25-Minute Loops
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Oct 20
Mamdani Targets $119 Billion Customer-Service Scams as AI Chatbots Trap Users in 25-Minute Loops
3 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Oct 20
Summary
A 25-minute fight over unexplained hotel charges led New York City consumer commissioner Zohran Mamdani to argue that AI chatbots are built less to solve problems than to wear customers down.
Mamdani says the systems bury phone access, interrupt complaints with canned menus and ignore requests for a human agent, creating a "doom loop" of repeated prompts and irrelevant offers.
He frames the issue as more than annoyance: automated service failures can delay medical care, block insurance claims, enable predatory subscriptions and worsen account-recovery problems.
Americans lose an estimated $119 billion a year to scams, he writes, casting AI-driven customer service as part of a broader consumer-protection threat rather than a mere tech inconvenience.