While Elon Musk sweeps through the federal government, those who are close to the billionaire are a certain tool in their arsenal: artificial intelligence.
Mr. Musk, who leads a whole series of technology companies, including SpaceX, Tesla, X and XAI, is aware of the federal expenditure by the so-called Ministry of Government Efficiency of Doge by the Trump administration. In the first two weeks of the administration, the Group increased federal agencies and worked employees to resign to reduce costs.
Musk union fellow who have taken roles within government agencies evaluate how they can use AI to identify cuts on the budget and detect waste and abuse, according to people familiar with internal conversations, who talked about the state of anonymity for fear of retribution .
On Monday, Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer who was appointed by the new administration to lead the efforts of the general service administration, some employees that AI would be an important part of their cost reduction work, according to four people with knowledge of the conversation. At the agency, some employees are informed that they are expected to lower 50 percent of his budget.
The agency houses the Technology Transformation Services, a group of around 700 technologists that Mr. Musk's Doge has seen as an important source of technical talent. Members of Doge-Naar who has referred Mr. Shedd in internal messages as his 'advisers' Hebben spent the past two weeks interviewing employees, asked them to describe their technical performance and identify colleagues who show 'exceptional' talent .
On Monday, the TTS members met Mr. Shedd that he hoped to bundle all government contracts in a central database and use artificial intelligence to assess them for possible dismissal and budget reductions, according to the people who are familiar with the discussion. He noted that the acting GSA manager, a Trump -appointed and Salesforce director named Stephen Ehikian, maintains an AI strategy document.
AI can also be used as a tool to detect fraud and waste, Mr. Shedd added.
Neither GSA nor Mr. Shedd responded to requests for comments.
Although both the Trump and Biden administrations have indicated an interest in increasing federal expenditures for the use of AI technologies for the government, it is unclear whether the emerging technology can be used to identify too high expenses or fraud, Just as the allies of Mr. Musk have in mind. In public discussions, Mr. Musk depicted the US government with little evidence as unbridled with billions of dollars in fraud that can be cut out with hard work and technological know -how.
President Trump has defended the enormous reach of Mr. Musk and the tactic he used to shake up the federal bureaucracy.
“He has a team of very talented people, and we try to reduce the government, and he can probably shrink it as well as someone else, if not better,” Mr Trump told reporters on Monday.
Mr. Musk has been Bullish about building AI systems in his companies, while at the same time warning that powerful technology could destroy humanity if he has no control over it. Mr. Musk leads Xai, an artificial intelligence company that offers a chatbot and other services to his social media company, X, and also used to use AI for Power Driver's assistance systems at Tesla te Power.
He has also sued OpenAi, his most important competitor, claiming that the company, which he co-founded, has violated his founding contract by making commercial interests for the public interest. Mr. Musk left OpenAi in 2018 after disputes with other co-founders. (The New York Times has sued OpenAi and Microsoft and claims infringement of the copyright of news content with regard to AI systems. The two companies have denied the claims of the suit.)
The leaders of the largest AI companies of the nation – including Google, Meta, OpenAi and Amazon – donated last month to Mr Trump's inauguration, because they tried to edit the favor with a new administration that the federal policy on the Development technology.
Mr. Trump also mentioned David Sacks, a venture capitalist, donor and ally of Mr. Musk, as the “White House Ai and Crypto Tsar” and has withdrawn the order of the Biden government to create AI guarantees. Last month the president also announced a new AI initiative of $ 100 billion between OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank to create computer infrastructure in the United States to create artificial intelligence.
In his new government role, Mr. Musk has insisted that there is sufficient waste and fraud that has unnoticed, which, following claims he made when he reduced costs at companies such as Twitter. In a live stream audio interview that started after midnight on Monday in Washington, Mr. Musk claimed Those wasteful expenses, including 'fake people' who collect social security and medicine payments, as well as 'foreign frauds', $ 100 billion to $ 200 billion a year from American tax money fell.
“A trillion dollar can be saved by tackling waste, fraud and abuse,” he said without saying how he arrived at that number.
Aric Toler contributed reporting.
