AI will be used to assess the controversial email sent by Elon Musk asking government …

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After a recent email demanding federal employees summarize their work, it’s now understood that the responses will be assessed by an artificial intelligence system to determine if their work is valuable.

“Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk tweeted on the weekend, adding, “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”

Sure enough, soon the Office of Personnel Management sent emails to staff asking them exactly what they’d done the last week, with their managers copied. The deadline was given as today. The email did not include the threat in Musk’s tweet, asking only that employees not send attachments or classified information.

Chaos ensued. Republican Senator Gerald Connolly, the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, called Musk’s demand “illegal, reckless and yet another example of the cruel and arbitrary chaos Mr. Musk is inflicting on the people’s government and its dedicated public servants.”

The State Department, the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Department, and the National Security Agency, as well as Federal Bureau of Investigation director, Kash Patel, all agreed, asking staff not to comply and respond to the missive. The Department of Transportation didn’t agree, telling its employees to answer the call.

Though it might seem certain factions of Trump’s government are working at cross purposes, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, “Everyone is working together as one unified team at the direction of President Trump.” She added, in case anyone might doubt their own eyes, “Any notion to the contrary is completely false.”

The request has ignited a storm over Musk’s role in government and questions are being asked if it’s even legal to fire government employees over not responding to an email.

“It is cruel and disrespectful to hundreds of thousands of veterans who are wearing their second uniform in the civil service to be forced to justify their job duties to this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire who has never performed one single hour of honest public service in his life,” said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees.

Musk responded to the uproar today, calling the email request “utterly trivial” and a “standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send!” He added, “Yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers. Have you ever witnessed such INCOMPETENCE and CONTEMPT for how YOUR TAXES are being spent?”

Musk indicated that a second email would be sent, and “failure to respond a second time will result in termination.” Trump also responded today, saying in relation to the email, “I thought it was great.” He added, “We have people that don’t show up to work and nobody even knows if they work for the government.”

Whether nonresponders will be fired isn’t certain, with Trump saying they might be fired or be “semi-fired.” He also seems to believe some people didn’t respond because “it’s very possible that there is no such person or they’re not working.”

It remains to be seen if any employees will be let go if they don’t respond or if their response doesn’t meet expectations. The Trump administration is hoping to reduce the number of federal staff under the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE. Musk, who’s heading DOGE, is following a similar playbook to the one when he took over Twitter Inc. and fired a significant part of the workforce.

As for where AI comes in, according to House Speaker Mike Johnson, Musk has “cracked the code” and “is now inside the agencies.”

“He’s created these algorithms that are constantly crawling through the data,” added Johnson. “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. It is truly a revolutionary moment for the nation.”

Still, the well-oiled machine has already malfunctioned a few times, with reports that already some critical staff have been laid off only to be rehired when it was ascertained their jobs were essential. The cost-cutting team has also had to back off certain departments where very sensitive information is held. One thing for certain is the coming months are going to be messy inside government offices where the DOGE chainsaw is wielded.

“I share the administration’s goal of reducing the size of the federal government,” Senator Katie Britt of Alabama, “but this approach is bringing confusion, anxiety and now trauma to our civil servants.”

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