In recent months, Elon Musk’s DOGE has attempted to hollow out America’s federal bureaucracy. After firing droves of workers and attempting to downsize prominent agencies, the billionaire-backed effort is attempting to create a new governance model that prioritizes automation.
On Friday, Wired reported that, in a flailing attempt to modernize the agency, a new ChatGPT-style bot was integrated into agency staffers’ workflows.
The Agency Support Companion is supposed to “assist employees with everyday tasks and enhance productivity,” an internal email viewed by the magazine reads. However, the chatbot does not seem to work very well. “Honestly, no one has really been talking about it at all,” a source who works at the agency told Wired.
Reminder that during Covid, Elon bought a bunch of CPAP machines (for sleep apnea), sent these to various hospitals, claimed he sent them ‘respirators’, and then claimed it was a conspiracy against him personally when hospitals told him ‘these are not respirators, they will not work, we cannot use them’.