DOGE’s AI system could decide the fate of US federal workers

On Saturday, 22nd February, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) headed by Musk, sent emails to federal employees asking them to report their accomplishments from last week. According to more recent reports, the OPM will use AI to assess the employees’ responses.

According to NBC News, Elon Musk’s DOGE is using AI to determine the usefulness of federal workers based on their weekly tasks. The responses will be fed into a large language model (LLM), an advanced AI system capable of understanding large textual data.

Prior to sending the emails, Musk posted on X, “All federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they did last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”

Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week.

Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 22, 2025

The email asked employees to explain what they “accomplished last week” in 5 bullet points. It also mentioned not to “send any classified information, links, or attachments.” The email itself did not contain a warning of termination or resignation, but a deadline was set for Monday at 11:59 PM EST.

House Speaker Mike Johnson’s statement praising Musk’s efforts also seems to confirm that DOGE has employed AI systems.

At a Monday event hosted by the advocacy group, ‘Americans for Prosperity,’ Mike Johnson said, “Elon has cracked the code. He is now inside the agencies. He’s created these algorithms that are constantly crawling through the data. And as he told me in his office, the data doesn’t lie. We’re going to be able to get the information. We’re going to be able to transform the way the federal government works at the end of this, and that is a very exciting prospect.”

Musk and DOGE’s handling of government data and information has become an issue among critics. Plaintiffs have argued in several lawsuits that DOGE is overlooking the laws and rules about data and privacy. 

OPM says a response is voluntary, but Musk stays adamant about termination

On Monday, the Justice Department sent an email to its workforce to clarify the confusion surrounding terminations and resignations. It stated that during the meeting with the interagency Chief Human Capital Officers Council, OPM clarified that ignoring the email would not lead to automatic resignation despite Elon Musk’s warning on X.

In another X post on Monday, Musk said that “so many failed even that inane test,” showing “incompetence and contempt for how your taxes are being spent,” even if the requirement was only to  “type some words and press send.”

In yet another post, he added, “Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance.” He again warned about termination in the case of no response.

Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance.

Failure to respond a second time will result in termination. https://t.co/04xzgScXfj

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 25, 2025

Musk has faced backlash from workers, agencies, and unions over his threats of termination. Despite the backlash, in a Monday meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, President Donald Trump said “it was great” and appreciated Musk’s threat as a genius move.

Trump said, “We have people who don’t show up to work, and nobody even knows if they work for the government, so by asking the question ‘tell us what you did this week,’ he’s saying, ‘Are you actually working?”

He said, “If people don’t respond, it’s very possible that there is no such person or they’re not working.” He added that “a lot of people are not answering because they don’t even exist.”

Some unions and groups have already criticized Trump’s mass layoffs of workers in probation periods as an unlawful practice.

Lawyer, Norm Eisen, shared a statement on behalf of the plaintiffs. He said, “The mass firings ordered by OPM are illegal and betray the trust of countless federal employees.” He called the recent email a “patronizing demand,” and he said that fed employees asked to justify themselves “by enumerating five accomplishments just adds insult to injury.” Eisen said that is against the law.

Trump-supporting agencies have told their employees to ignore the email

Musk intends to execute Trump’s directions to reduce the federal workforce by 10%. Some agencies headed by Trump’s supporters asked their employees to ignore the email.

NBC reported that Justice Department employees were told on Monday that they don’t need to respond to the email given the “sensitive nature of the Department’s work.” For those who have already written back, “no further action is needed,” said Jolene Ann Lauria, Assistant Attorney General for Administration.

Kash Patel, the FBI director, also told the employees to “pause any responses” to the email. He said the Federal Bureau would review the employees’ work independently. Moreover, the exact instructions for ignoring the email were shared with the employees of the State Department, the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Department, the National Security Agency, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The employees of The Department of Agriculture also received an unsigned email stating the response is “voluntary and not required.”

Northern District Illinois’s spokesperson shared that the court’s chief judge told employees, “We are judiciary employees, and our policies and procedures are governed by the Judicial Conference of the United States and our local court HR handbooks.” South District of New York’s workers were also told not to respond to the email.

Some agencies are responding to the email with caution

The Environmental Protection Agency shared samples for a response “as empathy for their staff,” according to an employee of the agency. 

While the Health and Human Services Department initially told its employees to respond to the email by the deadline, it later informed its employees about OPM’s new guidance and warned that the information they share would be “read by malign foreign actors.”

The Department of Transportation allowed the employees to send their responses to the OPM email with five bullet points without any classified information. One step ahead, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation Sean Duffy publicly posted his previous week’s accomplishments as bullet points on X.

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