AI to Evaluate Federal Workers' Job Justifications in Controversial DOGE Initiative

Elon Musk's AI to decide federal jobs? 2.3 million US workers' fate now in hands of Artificial Intelligence

Elon Musk has set a new deadline for 2.3 million US federal workers to justify their jobs, with their responses evaluated by an AI system to determine their necessity. Workers will have a second chance to respond or face termination, as part of Musk's aggressive cost-cutting measures.Elon Musk have announced a new deadline for 2.3 million US federal workers to justify their job. Now according to a report, their fate will be decided not by some random indiviuals or Musk himself but by an Artificial Intelligence! "Responses to the Elon Musk-directed email to government employees about what work they had accomplished in the last week are expected to be fed into an artificial intelligence system to determine whether those jobs are necessary," the NBC News claimed citing sources. "The information will go into an LLM (Large Language Model), an advanced AI system that looks at huge amounts of text data to understand, generate and process human language, the sources said. The AI system will determine whether someone's work is mission-critical or not," the report added. Elon Musk has warned that federal employees will get "a second chance" to respond to his email demanding they justify their jobs -- or face termination. "Subject to the president's discretion, they will have another opportunity. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination," Musk posted on X, the social media platform he owns. Tasked by President Donald Trump with leading a radical downsizing of the federal government, Musk has spearheaded mass layoffs through his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). So far, more than 20,000 workers have been let go, while the administration has offered buyouts to an additional 75,000 employees. The federal workforce, which numbers around 2.3 million, has been shaken by Musk's aggressive cost-cutting measures. His sweeping layoffs have also disrupted the broader U.S. economy, forcing government contractors to reduce staff and delay payments to vendors. Since taking office on January 20, Trump has frozen billions in foreign aid and effectively dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, leaving critical supplies like medicine and food stranded in warehouses. Meanwhile, agencies have struggled to rehire workers responsible for essential tasks such as nuclear weapons oversight and bird flu response. On Monday, a coalition of labor unions updated their lawsuit, urging a federal judge to rule Musk's email illegal. Simultaneously, a judge blocked DOGE from accessing sensitive data held by the Education Department and the Office of Personnel Management. Unlike Cabinet members or independent agency heads, Musk's appointment required no Senate approval, raising further legal and political scrutiny over his role.

AI will be used to assess the controversial email sent by Elon Musk asking government workers to justify their jobs - SiliconANGLE

AI will be used to assess the controversial email sent by Elon Musk asking government workers to justify their jobs After a recent email demanding federal employees summarize their work, it's now understood that the responses will be assessed by an artificial intelligence system to determine if their work is valuable. "Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump's instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week," Musk tweeted on the weekend, adding, "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation." Sure enough, soon the Office of Personnel Management sent emails to staff asking them exactly what they'd done the last week, with their managers cc'ed. The deadline was given as today. The email did not include the threat in Musk's tweet, asking only that employees not send attachments or classified information. Chaos ensued, with Republican Senator Gerald Connolly, the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, calling Musk's demand, "illegal, reckless, and yet another example of the cruel and arbitrary chaos Mr. Musk is inflicting on the people's government and its dedicated public servants." The State Department, the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Department, and the National Security Agency, as well as Federal Bureau of Investigation director, Kash Patel, all agreed, asking staff not to comply and respond to the missive. The Department of Transportation didn't agree, telling its employees to answer the call. While it might seem certain factions of Trump's government are working at cross purposes, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, "Everyone is working together as one unified team at the direction of President Trump." She added, "Any notion to the contrary is completely false." The request has ignited a storm over Musk's role in government and questions are being asked if it's even legal to fire government employees over not responding to an email. "It is cruel and disrespectful to hundreds of thousands of veterans who are wearing their second uniform in the civil service to be forced to justify their job duties to this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire who has never performed one single hour of honest public service in his life," said Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees. Musk responded to the uproar today, calling the email request "utterly trivial" and a "standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send!" He added, "Yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers. Have you ever witnessed such INCOMPETENCE and CONTEMPT for how YOUR TAXES are being spent?" Musk indicated that a second email would be sent, and "failure to respond a second time will result in termination." Trump also responded today, saying in relation to the email, "I thought it was great." He added, "We have people that don't show up to work and nobody even knows if they work for the government." Whether non-responders will be fired isn't certain, with Trump saying they might be fired or be "semi-fired." He also seems to believe some people didn't respond because "it's very possible that there is no such person or they're not working." It remains to be seen if any employees will be let go if they don't respond or if their response doesn't meet expectations. The Trump administration is hoping to reduce the number of federal staff under the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE. It seems Musk, who's heading DOGE, is following a similar playbook to the one when he took over Twitter Inc. and fired a significant part of the workforce. As for where AI comes in, according to House Speaker Mike Johnson, Musk has "cracked the code" and "is now inside the agencies." "He's created these algorithms that are constantly crawling through the data," added Johnson. "And as he told me in his office, the data doesn't lie. We're going to be able to get the information. We're going to be able to transform the way the federal government works at the end of this, and that is a very exciting prospect. It is truly a revolutionary moment for the nation." It seems the well-oiled machine has already malfunctioned a few times, with reports that already some critical staff have been laid off only to be re-hired when it was ascertained their jobs were essential. The cost-cutting team has also had to back off certain departments where very sensitive information is held. One thing for certain is the coming months are going to be messy inside government offices where the DOGE chainsaw is wielded. "I share the administration's goal of reducing the size of the federal government," Senator Katie Britt of Alabama, "but this approach is bringing confusion, anxiety, and now trauma to our civil servants."

Musk's DOGE to Use AI in Federal Job Review: Report - Decrypt

The Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, will use artificial intelligence to assess responses submitted by federal employees after they were sent an ultimatum to justify their jobs on Friday, according to a report by NBC News. Last week, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management reportedly emailed federal workers to ask them to report their accomplishments from the previous week. No official statement has been made by Musk, DOGE, or the OPM regarding whether AI will be used to analyze worker responses. Attempts were made to contact OPM but have so far gone unanswered. "Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager," the email reportedly reads. "Please do not send any classified information, links, or attachments. Deadline is this Monday at 11:59 pm EST." Despite this, Musk took to X on Monday, calling the email request "utterly trivial." "The standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send," Musk wrote. "Yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers." While the fear of AI replacing workers is often framed as a future concern, the use of AI to determine hiring and firing decisions is already a reality. According to a 2023 study by the Pew Research Center, 62% of Americans believe AI will have a major impact on job holders. In the survey, Pew said many were concerned about the technology being used in hiring and workplace assessment. "They reject the idea that AI would be used in making final hiring decisions, by a ratio of roughly ten-to-one," the Pew Research Center wrote. "A smaller plurality (41%) also opposes the use of AI in reviewing job applications." While it remains to be seen whether AI will decide the fate of federal workers, lawsuits against the use of AI in hiring and firing decisions have already been filed in federal court. In 2022, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit against China-based tutoring company iTutorGroup for age discrimination. The lawsuit alleged that the company's AI-powered hiring system automatically rejected female applicants over 55 and male applicants over 60, violating U.S. employment laws. The suit was settled in August 2023 after iTutorGroup agreed to pay $365,000 to over 200 job applicants who were rejected due to their age.

DOGE Is Working on Software That Automates the Firing of Government Workers

Engineers for Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, are working on new software that could assist mass firings of federal workers across government, sources tell WIRED. The software, called AutoRIF, which stands for Automated Reduction in Force, was first developed by the Department of Defense more than two decades ago. Since then, it's been updated several times and used by a variety of agencies to expedite reductions in workforce. Screenshots of internal databases reviewed by WIRED show that DOGE operatives have accessed AutoRIF and appear to be editing its code. There is a repository in the Office of Personnel Management's (OPM) enterprise GitHub system titled "autorif" in a space created specifically for the director's office -- where Musk associates have taken charge -- soon after Trump took office. Changes were made as recently as this weekend. So far, federal agency firings have been conducted manually, with HR officials combing through employee registries and lists provided by managers, sources tell WIRED. Probationary employees -- those who were recently hired, promoted, or otherwise changed roles -- have been targeted first, as they lack certain civil service protections that would make them harder to fire. Thousands of workers have been terminated over the last few weeks across multiple agencies. With new software and the use of AI, some government employees fear that large-scale terminations could roll out even more quickly. While DOGE could use AutoRIF as the DOD built it, multiple OPM sources speculated that the Musk-affiliated engineers could be building their own software on top of, or using code from, AutoRIF. In screenshots viewed by WIRED, Riccardo Biasini, a former engineer at Tesla and a director at The Boring Company, has seemingly been tasked with pruning AutoRIF on GitHub, with his name attached to the repository. "Remove obsolete versions of autorif," one file description authored by a user with Biasini's username on GitHub says. Biasini has also been listed as the main point of contact for the government-wide email system created by the Trump administration from within OPM to solicit resignation emails from federal workers. OPM did not immediately respond to requests for comment from WIRED. In order to conduct RIFs, government HR officials are required to create lists ranking employees who may be subject to firings. AutoRIF does that automatically, a former government HR official tells WIRED. "However, even with the use of any automated system, the OPM guidance says all data has to be confirmed manually and that employees (or their representative) are allowed to examine the registers." It's not immediately clear if AutoRIF's capabilities have been altered either by the Defense Department or DOGE. The revelation that DOGE is working on AutoRIF comes as it seemingly prepares for its second major round of firings. On Saturday evening, government workers received yet another email purportedly from OPM demanding that they reply detailing what they accomplished in the last week. Some agencies, like the FBI, asked that employees not respond to the message. In a meeting with HR officials on Monday, OPM told agencies they could ignore the email. In these emails, government workers were asked to lay out five bullet points explaining their top work achievements of the last week. On Monday, NBC News reported that this information would be fed into an unspecified Large Language Model (LLM) that would assess whether an employee was necessary. Before the first round of probationary firings, Centers for Disease Control managers were tasked with marking workers they deemed as "mission critical" and then sending a list of them up the chain of command ahead of firings, a CDC source tells WIRED. "CDC went through a very, very deliberate effort to characterize our probationary employees as mission critical or not, and that way we could keep those that would have real impacts to the mission should they get terminated," they say. "None of that was taken into account. They just sent us a list and said, 'terminate these employees effective immediately.'"