(NewsNation) — As the Department of Government Efficiency moves to eliminate federal spending, some officials believe that some federal agency employees could be replaced by artificial intelligence.
After the deadline for federal workers to decide whether they will accept a buyout was extended until next week, the Office of Personnel Management said that even more jobs could be slashed. As of this week, an estimated 60,000 employees have decided to take the buyout.
Yet, with Elon Musk’s goal to cut up to $2 trillion in federal spending, the General Services Administration said that some of those cuts could happen due to AI.
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The New York Times reported the GSA could be a big target for staffing cuts and that the agency could be looking at having its budget reduced by 50%. Josh Gruenbaum, who was appointed by President Donald Trump to oversee GSA, wrote in a memo that the agency is seeking to discover how artificial intelligence could be used to reduce prices for its client agencies.
The memo, obtained by the New York Times, indicated that the buyouts were merely a first step to eliminating staffing within GSA.
“We can and must make tough decisions to create a leaner and more agile organization,” Gruenbaum wrote.
In a recording of a meeting obtained by 404 Media and reported on by the Daily Mail, Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer who now works at GSA said in a meeting that “an internal technology team” must work on using AI to determine what the agency could look like moving forward.
Musk wrote in a social media post, however, that cuts may already be taking place within the GSA. A department within the agency that provides technological assistance to government agencies has been deleted, Musk wrote.
GSA currently has a staff of 12,000 employees who work to manage and support government agencies.
The Washington Post reported that DOGE is using AI software to target cuts within the Department of Education. The Post report indicated that sensitive information like internal financial information has been fed into a software system to analyze spending.
Sources told the Post that the AI probe includes data with personally identifiable information for people who manage grants, as well as sensitive internal financial data.
