DOGE Plan to Push AI Across the US Federal Government is Wildly Dangerous
DOGE Plan to Push AI Across the US Federal Government is Wildly Dangerous
There are already many instances of AI-driven governance gone wrong, writes Ben Green. DOGE may offer a new case study.
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The overall goal is to cut the agency’s budget by fifty percent. Shedd suggested using AI to analyze contracts for redundancies, root out fraud, and facilitate a reduction in the federal workforce by automating much of their work.
I am bullish on AI in the long run.
I am skeptical that given the state of affairs in 2025, you can reasonably automate half of the federal government, via AI or any other means.
I also don't think that the way to do this is to lay off half of the federal workforce and then, after the fact, see what can be automated. If you look at the private sector automating things, it tends to hedge its bets. Take self-service point-of-sale kiosks. We didn't just see companies simply lay off all cashiers. Instead, we saw them brought in as an option, then had the company look at what worked and what didn't work -- and some of those were really bad at first -- and then increase the rate of deployment once it had confidence in the solution and a handle on the issues that came with them.
Yeah, but you and much of the business world have intelligence and strategy. Elon is the guy who thinks he can just pay some Chinese gamer to play a game for him, then pretend he did it himself; that's his version of "brilliant strategist."
It's no wonder he can't figure out how to automate anything safely or correctly, because he doesn't actually understand how to do anything himself, and he can't just pay some Chinese rando to do it for him.
I worked as a consultant for a long time. I learned that anyone who starts a question with "Why don't we just..." generally doesn't understand the problem.
"Why don't we just..."
"All you need to do is..."