Elon Musk's team working at 'DOGE' are developing a first-of-its-kind AI chatbot to help them cut government spending.
The Department of Government Efficiency continues to grab headlines, with Elon Musk's divisive task force wasting no time in trimming the fat from government spending. Musk himself has admitted that the plans to cut $2 trillion from government spending might not be possible, but with staff supposedly working 120-hour weeks, they're giving it a damn good try.
There's already been a backlash to the DOGE, which went as far as staffers being threatened with violence. There's also the fact that one worker quit over accusations of racism, and there are concerns about the powers the group has been granted.
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The DOGE team isn't sitting around twiddling their thumbs, and as well as making moves on the National Space Council and USAid, they're apparently developing an AI chatbot to try and cut costs.
According to Wired, the "GSAi" is a custom generative AI chatbot that will be used by the US General Services Administration. It's thought that the chatbot will boost the productivity of the GSA's 12,000 employees who manage office buildings, contracts, and IT infrastructures across the entire federal government. There are hopes that GSAi will tackle the mountains of contract and procurement data while freeing up employees.
Thomas Shedd is a former Tesla employee who now heads up the GSA's Technology Transformation Services, hinting at the idea in a meeting: "Another [project] I’m trying to work on is a centralized place for contracts so we can run analysis on them.
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"This is not new at all—this is something that’s been in motion before we started. The thing that’s different is potentially building that whole system in-house and building it very quickly. This goes back to this, ‘How do we understand how the government is spending money?'" Shedd has also discussed deploying 'AI coding agents' as a top priority.
One anonymous employee says GSAi comes about following chats between the GSA and Google about what its Gemini AI could do. Apparently, Gemini didn't provide the right level of data that DOGE needed, leading it to develop its own in-house chatbot.
All of this comes as President Donald Trump is pushing America into a tech-savvy future. Although the Biden administration pumped the brakes on AI's development, Trump has already signed his "Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence" executive order. The POTUS wants the United States to exert 'global dominance' in AI, with the DOGE jumping on the bandwagon.
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There are major concerns from federal employees, labor unions, civil society groups, and Democrats when it comes to the powers that the DOGE already has, with many arguing they might be unconstitutional.
DOGE hasn't publicly acknowledged its use of AI, although someone close to the group told Wired that at least one AI tool has recently been rolled out.
It's already reported that DOGE staffers at the Department of Education are using AI to look at spending and programs. With GSAi, it's hoped that employees will be able to draft memos faster.