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A fourth-year Elon Musk staffer has create a custom AI chatbot that purports to avail theDepartment of Government Efficiencyeliminate politics waste matter and is powered by Musk ’s stilted news company xAI , TechCrunch has learned .
The chatbot , which was publicly approachable until Tuesday , was host ona DOGE - named subdomainon the website of Christopher Stanley , who works as the head of security measures engine room at SpaceX , as well asat the White House . Soon after publication , the chatbot appeared to drop offline .
It ’s not clear if the chatbot is experimental or has been used by DOGE as part of its unprecedented cost - cutting effort across the U.S. regime , which haveraised sound and privacy concerns .
Stanley and a White House representative did n’t respond to a postulation for comment .
The chatbotcalls itself the “ Department of Government Efficiency AI Assistant ” and says it is poweredby xAI ’s Grok-2.The chatbottold TechCrunchit is here to “ serve authorities personnel department in identifying waste and meliorate efficiency . ”
The chatbot looks like a customized prominent linguistic communication model trained on certain fundamental DOGE goals — peculiarly five “ guiding principles , ” which include making government requirements “ less dumb ” and deleting “ unnecessary constituent or processes . ”
For example , when TechCrunchasked the chatbotwhat DOGE should do about USAID , a federal agencyeffectively shutteredby DOGE ’s reforms , it applied the five guiding principles and recommended the elimination of any “ bureaucratic layers ” between determination makers and USAID fund recipients .
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The chatbot reverts to these five principles on a wide-eyed regalia of topics . When TechCrunchasked the chatbotwhich 20th - century political leaders DOGE should emulate , it applied the guiding principles and responded with two mass : former U.K. prime minister Margaret Thatcher and former Singaporean prime minister of religion Lee Kuan Yew , say they provide “ first-class models for DOGE ” by focusing on “ efficiency , reduction , and the use of technology . ”
The chatbot suffers from some issue , including one that’scommon to all large lyric models : hallucination . When TechCrunch ask the chatbot for names of people who work at DOGE , it ab initio reject butlater gavegeneric names and made - up positions . The chatbot also sometimes give unexpended advice , like recommendingthat USAID use drone , wearables , and other internet - connect devices to improve its efficiency .
DOGE has embraced AI as part of its cause to overhaul the U.S. government , according to reports that DOGE is reportedly working on a separate AI chatbot for the General Services Administration , the powerful representation that superintend U.S. procurement , per Wired .
It ’s also not clear if the chatbot ’s use of xAI presents a conflict of interest for Musk . Since LLMs typically charge exploiter through API usance , government workers using an xAI - power chatbot could right away increase xAI ’s revenue . A representative for xAI could not be reach .
update to note that the chatbot is no longer publicly approachable .
