On March 11, The Atlantic Monthly reported thatMuskThe Ministry of Government Efficiency, which leads the Ministry, is working to downsize and reorganizeUSAfunctionaryteam, this effort has entered a new phase. The concept is simple:Utilizing generativeAIto automate work previously done by people.
The U.S. government is working with 1,500 federal employees of the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) to test aNew Chatbotand could be released to the entire agency as early as this Friday.This means that more than 10,000 staff responsible for more than $100 billion in contracts and services can use the robot.
The chatbot is seen by GSA leadership as a tool to boost the productivity of federal workers and is part of a larger program of action by Government Efficiency and its allies. Speaking about GSA's overall program, Thomas Scheider, a former Tesla engineer who was recently named director of GSA's information technology division, the Technology Transformation Service, told an all-staff meeting last month that the agency is moving forward with "Artificial Intelligence Prioritization Strategy".
"As you know, as we downsize the federal government as a whole, there are still a large number of programs that need to be preserved, and this presents a huge opportunity for technology and automation to play a full role," Shedd said. He suggested that "coding agents" - AI programs that can write and potentially deploy code in place of humans - could be made available across the government. In addition, Shedd said thatAI can "analyze contracts" and software can be used to "automate" GSA's "financial functions".
Using AI on the job is commonplace these days, and GSA's chatbot probably won't have a huge impact on government operations. But that's justA small example of how the Department of Government Efficiency continues to make significant cuts to the civil service. At the Department of Education, Government Efficiency consultants are reportedly feeding sensitive data about agency spending into an AI program to determine the direction of spending cuts. The Department of Government Efficiency is said to intend to use AI to help determine whether employees in government departments should keep their jobs.
At another TTS meeting late last week, Shedd said thatHe expects the department to be "downsized by at least 50%" in a few weeks.
