Musk's DOGE crew wants to go all-in on AI

Driving the news: In a Monday meeting at the General Services Administration's Technology Transformation Services, Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer recently appointed as director of TTS, outlined broad plans to implement AI across the federal government as a tool to automate tasks, write code and combine systems across agencies.

• The meeting was reported by the New York Times, Wired and 404 Media.

Between the lines: There is already a fog of confusion over Musk and his team's unprecedented access to broad swathes of federal systems.

• The public knows virtually nothing about what kinds of AI the government wants to employ, how and where it plans to apply it, and what kinds of oversight and safeguards might be put in place.
• Current AI systems require safeguards to guard against error, bias and the technology's tendency to make things up.

• These are issues being raised in boardrooms and workplaces everywhere today as leaders excited about AI's potential struggle to win buy-in from suspicious employees. It's reasonable for government leaders and employees to raise these issues too.

Our thought bubble: AI could and probably will eventually help make government more efficient. But voters and workers have to be able to trust that it's being introduced transparently and thoughtfully.