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DOGE staffers used ChatGPT to identify massive grant cuts · THE DAILY BRIEF

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome back everyone. It's been about a year since Elon
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Musk and employees in DOGE ended hundreds of government grants,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: and recently depositions from two staffers about their actions were
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  Speaker 1: made public, taken down, and then ordered to be made
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: public again. The videos offered the clearest glimpse yet into
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: the decision making behind which program stayed and which went,
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  Speaker 1: and in many cases, staffers were relying on chat GPT
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  Speaker 1: to make those life changing decisions. Our Peter Harlambus test
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  Speaker 1: tonight's prime focus.
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  Speaker 2: Do you think.
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  Speaker 3: It's inappropriate anyway that someone in their twenties, with no
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  Speaker 3: experience with grants for federal government was making personal judgment
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  Speaker 3: calls about what grants were counseled.
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  Speaker 4: Jackson, No, I don't think it's inappropriate.
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  Speaker 5: A revealing behind the scenes look at Elon Musk's Department
• 0:47
  Speaker 5: of Government Efficiency and its unusual process for cutting federal spending.
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  Speaker 5: Last year, two former DOGE staffers were testifying about cuts
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  Speaker 5: made to federal grants for humanities research. It came to
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  Speaker 5: more than one hundred million dollars.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: Why is a documentary about Holocaust survivors.
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  Speaker 6: That's the gender based story that's inherently discriminatory to focus
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  Speaker 6: on this specific group.
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  Speaker 7: It's inherently discriminatory to focus on what specific group.
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  Speaker 6: The gender based so females during the Holocaust.
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  Speaker 5: The deposition videos were released as part of a civil
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  Speaker 5: lawsuit brought by a group of nonprofits whose grants were
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  Speaker 5: eliminated last year. They argued that DOGE staffers like Nate
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  Speaker 5: Cavnall and Justin Fox didn't have the authority to.
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  Speaker 2: Make those decisions.
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  Speaker 5: They said they used chatchypt and hunted for keywords they
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  Speaker 5: considered tip offs the diversity, equity and inclusion, where it's
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  Speaker 5: like homosexual immigrant melting pot.
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  Speaker 2: How are you otherwise finding grants that were DEI? Was
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  Speaker 2: it not through certain terms?
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  Speaker 4: Certain words you would search DEI DEI A equity, inclusion, bipock, LGBTQ,
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  Speaker 4: LGBTQ plus, et cetera.
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  Speaker 3: What do you find wasteful about grants relating to black, homosexual,
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  Speaker 3: or LGBTQ subjects injection?
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  Speaker 6: It is non critical spend, meaning nobody's life is at stake.
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  Speaker 7: But you didn't screen for white, Caucasian or heterosexual. Right,
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  Speaker 7: we could have, but you didn't. We didn't, They said.
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  Speaker 5: More than a thousand grant descriptions into chat GPT and
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  Speaker 5: a's the following prompt.
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  Speaker 3: From the perspective of someone looking to identify DEI grants.
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  Speaker 2: Does this involve DEI?
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  Speaker 3: Respond factually in less than one hundred and twenty characters,
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  Speaker 3: begin with yes.
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  Speaker 2: Or no, followed by a brief explanation.
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  Speaker 3: Do not use quote this initiative, close quote or quote
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  Speaker 3: this description close quote in your response?
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  Speaker 2: Did I read that correctly? Yes, and that's the command
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  Speaker 2: for chat GPT? Is that right?
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  Speaker 6: Yes?
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  Speaker 5: But nowhere in that process did they clearly define DEI.
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  Speaker 2: How do you interpret DEI? There was the.
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  Speaker 6: EO explicitly laid out the details. I don't remember it
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  Speaker 6: off the top of my head.
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  Speaker 2: It's ok I'm asking for your understanding of it. Yeah.
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  Speaker 6: My understanding was exactly what was written in the EO. Okay,
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  Speaker 6: so can you I don't remember what.
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  Speaker 2: Was in the EO. So right now, do you have
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  Speaker 2: an understanding of what DEI is?
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  Speaker 6: Yeah?
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  Speaker 7: Okay, So what's your understanding? I guess you sit here
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  Speaker 7: today in this deposition.
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  Speaker 6: Well, it was exactly what was written in the EO,
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  Speaker 6: and so anytime that we would look at a grant
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  Speaker 6: through the lens of complying with an exactive order, we
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  Speaker 6: would just refer back to the EO and assess if
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  Speaker 6: this grant had relation to it.
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  Speaker 7: Okay, but I guess I'm stepping back from your methodologies
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  Speaker 7: strictly and terminating the grants. Do you have an understanding
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  Speaker 7: I guess you sit here today of what d I means. Yeah, okay,
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  Speaker 7: So what's your understanding of what it means?
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  Speaker 6: Well, it is exactly what was written in the EO.
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  Speaker 5: The men had no experience in government, but were given
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  Speaker 5: unprecedented authority to slash federal spending, making recommendations that became
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  Speaker 5: the basis for the largest mass termination of federal grants
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  Speaker 5: in the history of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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  Speaker 7: Did you ever find it problematic that you were alongside name.
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  Speaker 2: Shortlisting for termination projects that had hits on words like.
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  Speaker 7: Black, homosexual, LGBTQ plus objection.
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  Speaker 6: What do you mean problematic?
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  Speaker 2: What did you think about it? Let me put it
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  Speaker 2: that way.
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  Speaker 6: We were identifying wasteful spent in the government based on
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  Speaker 6: administration direction. That was the whole reason we were there,
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  Speaker 6: is to find savings.
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  Speaker 5: These videos have become controversial themselves, publicly released in March,
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  Speaker 5: and according to lawyers, with the Department of Justice, resulting
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  Speaker 5: in a torrent of threats.
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  Speaker 6: Against the two men.
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  Speaker 5: In response, a judge temporarily ordered the videos be taken
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  Speaker 5: offline before allowing their release, saying the embarrassment and reputational
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  Speaker 5: harm wasn't enough to become the public interest in the videos.
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  Speaker 5: The judge asked, DOJ lawyers? Are they not proud of
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  Speaker 5: what they did a year ago? Can they not stand
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  Speaker 5: behind the work they did? In fact, when asked a
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  Speaker 5: version of that question during their depositions, the men said
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  Speaker 5: they had no regrets.
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  Speaker 3: You don't regret that people might have lost import had
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  Speaker 3: come to.
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  Speaker 2: Just now to support their lives.
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  Speaker 4: I think it was more important to reduce the federal
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  Speaker 4: deficit from two trillion dollars to close to zero. Did
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  Speaker 4: you reduce their federal No, we didn't