Elon Musk uses AI to replace fired government workers

 Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is using artificial intelligence to replace the work of government employees that have been cut.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has deployed a proprietary AI tool called GSAi to 1,500 federal employees at the General Services Administration (GSA), Wired magazine reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.

GSAi operates as an AI-integrated chatbot (automatic chat software), similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini or Meta AI of Meta…

This move comes as DOGE, under the direction of Elon Musk, is aggressively cutting staff at federal agencies to save the US budget.

Wired’s source said GSAi is designed to be a virtual assistant that supports many tasks.

GSA employees were informed in an internal email that they could use GSAi to compose emails, summarize documents, write programming code, and more. In the future, the tool could also be used to analyze data and automatically review procurement contracts.

“The capabilities of the AI ​​tool are endless and will continue to improve as new information is added. You can compose emails, summarize text, write code…”, an internal memo at GSA shared about the features of the AI ​​tool being deployed.

However, the memo also emphasizes that employees are not allowed to share non-public federal information, such as images, audio, video, chat content, etc., with the GSAi tool to ensure security.

A source told Wired that the GSAi tool is not as effective as DOGE claims.

“It has the same capabilities as an intern, with the ability to give generic and predictable answers,” an anonymous employee at GSA revealed to Wired.

The source also said that GSAi has only been in development for a few months, but Elon Musk and DOGE’s leadership want to speed up the deployment of this AI tool in government agencies to quickly cut more federal employees.

In a meeting with all GSA employees last week, Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer who now heads GSA’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), announced that GSA’s technology division would be cutting 50% of its staff in the coming weeks.

The announcement comes just days after 90 employees at GSA’s technology division were laid off.

Thomas Shedd is an advocate for using AI and automation in government agencies to replace humans. Earlier last month, Shedd told employees that he plans to make AI a core part of TTS’s operating model.

The deployment of AI to replace humans at GSA has faced opposition from many experts.

“Is putting AI to work for government employees a move to lay off more people? I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened,” an anonymous AI expert told Wired.

In addition to the GSA, the Treasury Department along with the US Department of Health and Human Services are also considering using AI tools for their tasks to replace humans, but it is unclear whether they will use the GSAi tool deployed by DOGE.

The US military is also using a generative AI tool (capable of generating content based on user requests) called CamoGPT, however, it is still unclear what the actual function of this tool is.