Musks Dog using AI to sniff US federal workers, sources say sources say

By Alexandra Ulmer, Marisa Taylor, Jeffrey Dastin and officials of Alexandra Alper -Trump Administration told some US employees that Elon Musk’s Doge team used technologists to investigate at least one federal agency’s communication for hostility to President Donald Trump and his agenda, two people say. Although a large part of the effectiveness of the government of Musk remains in secrecy, the supervision would be an extraordinary use of technology to identify expressions of perceived disruptions in a workforce that has already been sustained by widespread fire and serious cost cut. The Doge team also uses the signal app to communicate with direct knowledge of the case according to one other person, which may violate the federal record rules, because messages may disappear after a period of time. And they deployed the grok AI chatbot, an aspiring “an aspiring medium -” strong “as part of their work that reduced the federal government, the person said. Reuters could not determine exactly how groc is used. The White House, Doge and Musk did not respond to requests for comment. The use of AI and signal reinforces the concerns among cyber security experts and government agencies who work with limited transparency and that the billionaire Musk or the Trump administration can use information with AI to promote their own interests, or to go to political targets. Kathleen Clark, an ethical government expert at the University of Washington in St. Louis, said the use of the private signal is contributing to the increasing concern about data security practices after the top officials of the Trump administration came under fire last month for the wrong inclusion of a journalist in a group chat for high-level military operations in Yemen. “If they use signal and not back up every message to federal files, they act illegally,” she said. Reuters’ interviews with almost 20 people with knowledge of Doge’s activities – and an investigation of hundreds of pages of lawsuits from lawsuits that challenge Doge’s access to data – emphasize the unorthodox use of AI and other technology in federal government activities. At the Environmental Protection Agency, for example, Trump appointments told some EPA managers that Musk’s team was rolling out AI to monitor workers, including searching for language in communication that is considered hostile to Trump or Musk, the two people said. The EPA, which comes laws such as the Clean Air and Works Act to enforce the environment, came under intense investigation through the Trump administration. Since January, it has placed nearly 600 employees on leave, saying that it will eliminate 65% of its budget, which could require further staff reduction. Trump-appointed officials who recorded EPA posts told drivers that Doge AI was using to monitor communications apps and software, including Microsoft teams, which are widely used for virtual calls and chats, the two sources familiar with these comments said. “We have been told that they are looking for anti-Trump or anti-musk language,” said a third source familiar with the EPA. Reuters could not independently confirm whether the AI ​​was being implemented. The Trump officials said Doge would be looking for people whose work did not match the mission of the administration, the first two sources said. “Be careful what you say, what you are tapping and what you do,” a driver said according to one of the sources. After the publication of this story, the EPA acknowledged in a statement that it “looked at AI to better optimize the agency functions and administrative efficiency, but said it did not use AI” because it makes staff decisions in conjunction with Doge. ” It did not directly address or use it to investigate workers. Musk portrayed Doge as a technical driven attempt to make the US federal government more efficient by targeting waste, fraud and abuse. He said the goal was to prune $ 1 trillion in spending, or 15% of the US annual budget. Few disputes the US government and its outdated computer systems are due to modernization. But Democrats say Musk and Trump clean the government of non-party civil servants and install loyalists who would make a blind eye for corruption. Many Republicans and independents are also critical of Doge’s actions. Clark, the ethical specialist, said the prospective supervision is alarming. It sounds like an abuse of government power to suppress or reproduce speech that the United States President does not like, ‘she said. Last year, before Trump was elected, Musk suggested that AI could be used to replace government workers, according to a person with direct knowledge of his comments. “The concept was that through the government’s data that they could ever build the most dynamic AI system,” the person said, adding that Ai could then “do the work”. The complex effort would involve teaching AI systems to automate some of the work currently being done by federal employees. As a special government employee, Musk has been forbidden under ethical laws to engage itself in government activities that will benefit him or his businesses. Transparency questions in addition to the use of signal, bypassing some Doge staff members other chains and preservation chains for official government documents by working from Google Docs at the same time instead of spreading single copies of concepts, a source informed by a government official said. “There are several people in one Google Doc who edit things at once,” the source said with reference to the online word processing software. It was partly how much worked so fast, the source added. The Trump administration argued that, as an arm of the president’s executive office, is not subject to laws that allow the public to access records produced by government agencies. Referring to Doge’s ‘unusual secrecy’, including signal use, a federal judge on March 10 ordered the group to give records to citizens for responsibility and ethics in Washington, an ethical watchdog that sued stiff documents under the federal laws on freedom of information. From Monday, the watchdog said, no records were turned. While Musk includes his young Doge team engineers and assistants deep into the government’s digital infrastructure, accusations that Doge deliberately work in secrecy have emerged in court cases that challenge the authority of Musk, the world’s richest man, to revive the federal government. Doge employees have dramatically tightened administrative controls at some agencies, which kept staff members in the dark while making significant operational changes, according to interviews and court provisions. When Musk’s team took control of the government’s human resources agency, the office or staff management, at the end of January, their OPM employees closed from a database containing sensitive personal information of dozens of millions of current and former federal workers, according to the previous reporting of Reuters. OPM is at the heart of the vision of the administration to shrink the government, and issues the government provisions that are seen as blueprints to reduce the public service. Since the end of January, more than 100 technical staff at OPM have lost access to the cloud where key applications are stored, according to two people familiar with the matter. Only two people still have access – one career staff and Greg Hogan, a political appointment that worked at an AI start and is now the chief information officer of OPM, added the sources. Hogan did not respond to a request for comment. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without edits to text.