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.

  • bluegreenwookie
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    2 days ago

    Look i get wanting to modernize. Some government agencies desperately need too.

    And maybe this is my old person yells at technology moment but ai is a menace. It makes work more complicated and makes too many mistakes to be reliable. Supposedly the reason so many ppl have been getting letters for deportation that are citizens is because of ai.

    • Doug Holland@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I’m also an old person who yells, and I agree.

      Mostly, though, if we’re going to ‘modernize’ the system (with or without AI), it needs to be done smartly and methodically, and by people who aren’t philosophically opposed to Social Security’s existence.

      • futatorius@lemm.ee
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        19 hours ago

        by people who aren’t philosophically opposed to Social Security’s existence

        Is nihilism a philosophy?

      • bluegreenwookie
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        1 day ago

        Yeah when I say modernized i mean computers that aren’t from the 90s lol

        • Doug Holland@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          I don’t know about the hardware, but I think the software is substantially older than that — dates back to the 1960s. I might be wrong, though, and I’m too stoned right now to Google it.

    • j0ester@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      You’re not wrong. We’re definitely not there for this generation. Maybe the next. My parents will be retiring in the next few years, and they don’t know anything about social media and websites - they would rather go to an office or pick up a phone.