The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has been making significant cuts to the federal government workforce, has deployed a proprietary generative AI chatbot available to 1,500 employees at the General Services Administration (GSA), according to a report from WIRED.
The GSA, which helps manage and support the basic functioning of federal agencies, was ground zero in the first Trump administration for automation efforts. The report says the chatbot, called GSAi, is based on Claude Haiku 3.5 as the default model, but users can also choose to use Claude Sonnet 3.5 v2 and Meta LLaMa 3.2, depending on the task.
Business leaders have been careful to characterize their use of intelligent automation and AI as tools that will free employees up to pursue more creative work, not to reduce headcount. But Elon Musk’s brandishing of a chainsaw at the recent CPAC convention, in addition to the many federal employees already let go, suggest DOGE intends to use it to enable more cuts, as the country is currently burdened by a record $36.56 trillion in debt, as of early March 2025.
In a recent town hall meeting, Thomas Shedd, head of the Technology Transformation Services, announced that the GSA’s tech branch would shrink by 50 percent over the next few weeks after already laying off nearly 100 workers last week.
“We will be a results-oriented and high-performance team,” the report quoted Shedd as saying at the meeting.