{"id":1027,"date":"2025-04-02T14:55:14","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T14:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/?p=1027"},"modified":"2025-04-02T16:51:38","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T16:51:38","slug":"senate-democrats-open-investigation-into-reports-ai-could-replace-contract-workers-at-education-department","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/02\/senate-democrats-open-investigation-into-reports-ai-could-replace-contract-workers-at-education-department\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate Democrats open investigation into reports AI could replace contract workers at Education Department"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Senate Democrats are opening an investigation into reports that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is attempting to replace some contract workers at the Education Department with artificial intelligence (AI). \u00a0<\/p>\n

Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Mazie Hirono (Hawaii), along with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.),\u00a0sent a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon after The New York Times reported<\/a> call centers that take questions from students and families about student aid could be replaced with an AI bot. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDOGE\u2019s proposal threatens to misinform borrowers and families, lead to data privacy breaches, and pose conflicts of interest arising from Elon Musk\u2019s financial stake in AI development,\u201d the letter said. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The call centers field around 15,000 questions per day from an average of 1,600 students and families. The proposal has been floated as the president is looking to dismantle the federal agency, laying off nearly half the Department of Education\u2019s employees already. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe department is open to using tools and systems that would enhance the customer service, security and transparency of data for students and parents,\u201d Madi Biedermann, the department\u2019s deputy assistant secretary for communications, told the Times in February. \u201cWe are evaluating all contracts to assess effectiveness relative to costs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The senators are concerned about problems with AI \u201challucinations,\u201d which cause chatbots to give the wrong information, along with privacy concerns. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf not properly safeguarded, confidential information present in either the training data or in the chatbot\u2019s past conversations could be inadvertently leaked during its interactions with other users or even obtained maliciously by bad actors,\u201d the letter reads. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The senators demand responses by April 16 to questions such as whether DOGE is working to replace call centers with AI bots and, if they are, what type of safeguards are being put in place to protect students and families.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven DOGE\u2019s record of prioritizing chaos over competence, there is little reason to believe that DOGE\u2019s AI chatbot would genuinely serve the needs of borrowers and families,\u201d\u00a0the Democrats wrote. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senate Democrats are opening an investigation into reports that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1029,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1027"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1028,"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027\/revisions\/1028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}