- Engineers at the Department of Government Efficiency have been working on a program that has the capability to automatically generate lists of government employees, ranking them in firing order. Wired reported the engineers appear to be editing the coding in the program.
- A government human resource employee said the data would still need to be confirmed manually, even while using the automated system.
- Thousands of workers have been terminated over the last few weeks across multiple agencies.
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Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is reportedly working on an artificial intelligence tool that can automate its sweeping cuts to the federal workforce. According to Wired, engineers at DOGE appear to be recoding “AutoRIF,” or Automatic Reduction in Force, a program developed by the Department of Defense more than two decades ago.
The system has the capability to automatically generate lists of government employees, ranking them in order of how subject they are to being fired.
Sources speculate that engineers associated with Musk could be building their own software based on AutoRIF.
Would the firings solely be determined by AI?
A government human resource employee told Wired that the Office of Personnel Guidance still has to confirm all of the data manually, with that work done by a human.
Thousands of workers have been terminated over the last few weeks across multiple agencies, as part of DOGE’s massive government overhaul.
Now, with the possible use of AI, government employees are bracing for more large-scale terminations.
The first round of layoffs earlier this month targeted probationary employees, who have worked for the government for less than a year.
What firing mistakes has DOGE made?
DOGE’S efforts to decrease the size of the federal workforce have already led to issues, as essential workers are mistakenly getting dismissed.
Earlier this month, the Department of Agriculture needed to rescind the terminations of several agency employees who were working to address the ongoing bird flu outbreak.
Another 300 employees from the National Nuclear Security Administration were also fired, but were quickly asked to return to work once it was determined their jobs were actually “essential.”
Neither DOGE nor OPM has commented on Wired’s report.