Doge Is Replacing Fired Workers with a Chatbot | Hacker News Reader

Doge Is Replacing Fired Workers with a Chatbot

gizmodo.com

51 pointsrbanffy44 comments

> GSA employees were told that when it comes to what they can use GSAi for, “the options are endless.”

I'm reminded of zombo.com.

The only limit is yourself.

The infinite is possible at ZomboCom.

Nuance lost in the title: government employees in an agency that has received job cuts are now being given access to a proprietary US government AI chatbot to use as they see fit. (the chatbot started development under the the previous administration for this purpose, for what it's worth)

The title gives the impression that AI is being expressly given the roles of fired workers but that doesn't seem to be the case.

The American executive branch just keeps hammering home how they are just that clueless middle manager who listens to nobody, thinks they know things and will screw everything up, declare victory, and make their escape before all the problems happen ...

I most saddened and worried about all the people that will really struggle to find a job. The numbers were already rather confusing before all of this, and despite how people try to make sense of it, finding a job seems rather difficult these days. There are a ton of applicants for any job posting. Now we’ll have a flood more.

I don’t want to debate “a recession”, but we might be entering into “a great depression” of some kind as the US figures out how to navigate all of this. In 4 years is the US going to be a thriving economy or will the US be an utter wreck?

Well at least it’s not an x.ai chatbot. That could totally happen though. I can see Musk providing chatbots for “free”.

I’m surprised this was flagged despite the very civil discussions.

A chatbot they can't even really use.

> GSA employees were told that when it comes to what they can use GSAi for, “the options are endless.” It then offered a list of tasks that, frankly, ended very quickly: “You can: draft emails, create talking points, summarize text, write code.”

> Employees were also given a pretty major caveat about how they can use GSAi: no nonpublic information or “controlled unclassified information”—information that is sensitive but not classified—can be shared with it.

So they can ask it to create drafts and talking points of nothing since they can't tell it the details of the topics they want drafted. It can't summarize texts they can't share with it. It might be able to write code so long as they keep the descriptions vague enough.

The amount of money DOGE and Trump is saving americans by firing government employees, shutting down departments, withdrawing from military operations...

I'd expect everyone in US to only have a few percent of income tax next year.

(Hint of sarcasm, yes, but an honest question; where is the money going?)

It will be used to make tax cuts available.

Only for the very top brackets.

Tax breaks for the super rich. What did you expect?

What other kind of tax breaks are there? Any tax cut for the middle class will be exploited by the super rich who have tax lawyers and accountants. So just keep raising taxes so the middle class pays even more?

The rich pay all the taxes, so those are the only people whose taxes you could cut. The top 25% pays 90% of all tax revenue: https://usafacts.org/articles/who-pays-the-most-income-tax/

Which is another reason it makes no sense to maintain/raise tax rates on the middle class while cutting taxes on the rich. This is burdensome for those paying while it adds very little to public coffers.

It makes sense if you want to make the tax burden more equal, like it is in Europe.

They're not saving any money.

This is it.

1) They can’t save the money. Congress has to do that. I mean they can illegally not-spend what Congress allocated, but not legally. Congress decides how much is spent, and on what.

And besides,

2) Their actions so far have guaranteed so much wasted prior spending (actions partway done that got cut off, wasting the prior spending) and certain losses in court that’ll cost money (blatantly illegal firings, rather than following the correct methods) that they’ve dug themselves a hole anyway. Even for generous and wrong (see point 1) versions of “how much they’ve saved” (but not counting lies like claiming already-spent money as savings) they’re way in the red.

The idea has always been demolishing the state, not saving money. I hope that, at least, all the data and systems that were deleted were not irrecoverably destroyed. It'll take a lot to rebuild when this government ends.

The IT systems are the least of the problems. Who in their right mind would aspire or begin a career in government/public work with this being a possibility. This is a generational scar that you will fundamentally alter the way civil servants interact with their organizations.

All civil servants I know do it for the same reason military enlist (in other countries - the US has different incentives): out of a wish to serve their country.

An understanding that you won’t be kicked in the balls for going into the civil service does rather help with the realization of the desire to serve. That understanding’s gone now. We already screwed around with them by doing things like periodically delaying paychecks but forcing them to work anyway, but not… this.

After this government passes, I’m sure new legal guarantees will be applied to civil service to prevent politically motivated purges and hiring sprees.

I hope those also extend to police forces, which are overwhelmingly far-right.

A lot of protections are already in place and have been ignored. Tens of days notice to Congress and for-cause required to dismiss? Nope, blanket firing with no notice. 60 days‘ notice required for layoffs? Ignored, we’ll just lie that it was “for performance” even though we didn’t look at performance and there’s clear evidence we didn’t.

The failure of the rule of law is going to be hard to law our way out of.

> The failure of the rule of law is going to be hard to law our way out of.

The fact civil servants carried out these orders is itself a good indication the protections are insufficient. Preventing a civil servant from carrying out their function is a criminal offense in some countries and they have authority to arrest the person preventing their exercise on the spot.

Unfortunately, a lot of the layoffs were for servants in probation that don't enjoy the same protections.

In Brazil civil servants have to go through admission tests (which are VERY hard to pass) and, since they have been validated by the admission test, they skip probation and enjoy full legal protections from day 1. This, for instance, has allowed civil servants to refuse direct presidential orders (in one case, a customs officer refused to hand over a foreign authority gift for improper paperwork - indicating potential corruption) and to investigate and report misconduct at the minister-level (in one case, COVID-19 vaccine procurement) without fear of repercussions. This is one of the many reasons they need protection against tyrants.

The US system has decided that the sitting president is not just personally immune from any legal action that could be imagined to be done in an official capacity, but also holds the power to hold anybody else immune as well. What legal actions could you even impose on such a person?

I also don't see what indications you have that the US is moving in a sensible direction? It seems unlikely to me that the US will learn anything from this.

> where is the money going?

The Republicans hope to pass tax cuts: https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-tax-bill-cuts-sena...

"[The most recent] plan calls for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts over a decade and at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts."

In other words, the tax cuts will actually cost MORE than is being saved by these spending cuts. We're going to go into debt even faster.

It is Republican dogma that tax cuts stimulate the economy and ultimately have a larger return for the government than raising taxes will.

Despite no evidence that this actually works. Plus the vast majority of experts on the topic saying it doesn’t work, but also, we’ve tried it and it doesn’t work.

Many countries have tried, some multiple times, and it NEVER worked.

It made rich people richer. That’s why they try again.

I think that's called "trickle down economics"? Which I don't think anyone believes any more is actually a viable thing. People have realised "money makes money". You give the rich more money/less tax, they just get richer at the expense of the less rich.

"We aim to shrink the federal government until its small enough to be dragged into the bathroom and drowned in the tub."

-Grover Nordquist: Starving The Beast

As always, almost all federal spending is entitlements, interest, and the military.

https://www.pgpf.org/article/chart-pack-the-us-budget/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

Why is Social Security always represented as an expense along with things like defense and administration? It is sourced from separate taxes and has no business in the US govt. budget.

It’s typically motivated by some desire to slant the figures, or else just not realizing how the funding is structured. Serious discussion of the budget doesn’t include Social Security.

Yeah people don't realize how tiny federal employees are as a part of our budget. Even firing half of all federal employees only amounts to a paltry 2% savings on our budget. The gop's increased military spending in the latest proposed budget dwarfs those savings.

From what I gather, anything they've saved is going to tax cuts for wealthier Americans and increased military spending.

The 90% of folks at the lower end are getting tax increases, too, as of the latest plan I've seen.

How much DOGE is saving is very questionable, too. Less than 1% of the annual budget fwiu. And whether those savings are actually permanent, or whether they cost us when consequences of cuts come calling after some time.

For reference, 90% is if you make under $250k a year

DOGE savings is only a tiny percent of the tax cuts cost. The truth is the tax cuts are going to be paid for with debt.

Otherwise, why vote to raise the debt ceiling, right?

The cuts to the IRS will lose the US more money than DOGE is saving elsewhere.

Apparently every employee the IRS was hiring was brining in far more than their wage.

The agents the IRS was hiring were going to raid cash only businesses. The democrats vetoed Mike Crapos ammendment to only use additional IRS funding to audit incomes >250k$.

The money being 'saved' is a drop in the bucket in the federal budget. This is performative, a dog and pony show, and will be used to justify unfunded tax cuts that will drive up the deficit. It's the same Santa Claus policies we always see when these people are in power: all the promised fiscal discipline goes out the window and a giveaway to their donors ensues.

The only way to really drive down federal spending is to attack the source of the problem: the regulatory capture of government by the health care system. Medicare is the elephant in the room, and due to the regulatory capture the lobotomized government won't use its negotiating power to keep the costs in check. It's a massive wealth transfer from taxpayers to the health care system.

This is what "AGI" is about isn't it? Replacing humans with chatbots and AI agents; at least that is what the mission is with these new influx of so-called 'AI' startups, OpenAI, xAI and all the other AI companies.

The problem you have here this time is that Elon is doing this with DOGE for against government workers. At least, they are admitting it instead of the thousands of startups that will not admit it and are building "AGI" to replace humans.

But of course. When AI gets into the government, it surely benefits humanity. /s

If Elon is doing this with DOGE, then this gives the green light for others to follow him and try to reduce their headcount with AI. It's already been admitted by many companies. (Salesforce, Klarna and Meta)

The Future of Jobs 2025 report clearly tells you this in advance of the 2030 timeline on what employers want to do with AI:

"Finally, half of employers plan to re- orient their business in response to AI, two-thirds plan to hire talent with specific AI skills, while 40% anticipate reducing their workforce where AI can automate tasks." [0].

[0] https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-repo...

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