DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts

[Say it aint so]

"As the Trump administration prepared to cancel contracts at the Department of Veteran Affairs this year, officials turned to a software engineer with no health care or government experience to guide them. The engineer, working for the Department of Government Efficiency, quickly built an artificial intelligence tool to identify which services from private companies were not essential. He labeled those contracts “MUNCHABLE.” ​

The code, using outdated and inexpensive AI models, produced results with glaring mistakes. For instance, it hallucinated the size of contracts, frequently misreading them and inflating their value. It concluded more than a thousand were each worth $34 million, when in fact some were for as little as $35,000. ​

The DOGE AI tool flagged more than 2,000 contracts for “munching.” It’s unclear how many have been or are on track to be canceled — the Trump administration’s decisions on VA contracts have largely been a black box. The VA uses contractors for many reasons, including to support hospitals, research and other services aimed at caring for ailing veterans. VA officials have said they’ve killed nearly 600 contracts overall. Congressional Democrats have been pressing VA leaders for specific details of what’s been canceled without success. ​

We identified at least two dozen on the DOGE list that have been canceled so far. Among the canceled contracts was one to maintain a gene sequencing device used to develop better cancer treatments. Another was for blood sample analysis in support of a VA research project. Another was to provide additional tools to measure and improve the care nurses provide.' Propublica (a good read in it's entirety)​

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Fire the Inspector Generals who have a grasp on the department inner workings they police, and have some kid with no knowledge what so ever create some error prone code and kill contracts and fire Veterans.
These actions are behind the acclaimed 2Trillion, 1Trillion, 160B minus the cost of firing 135B = 25B savings.
They literally should start a agency to cover the cost of all the lawsuits by people wrongfully terminated.
They should call it Department Of Lawless Termination (DOLT).

 

[Hans Blaster]

"As the Trump administration prepared to cancel contracts at the Department of Veteran Affairs this year, officials turned to a software engineer with no health care or government experience to guide them. The engineer, working for the Department of Government Efficiency, quickly built an artificial intelligence tool to identify which services from private companies were not essential. He labeled those contracts “MUNCHABLE.” ​

The code, using outdated and inexpensive AI models, produced results with glaring mistakes. For instance, it hallucinated the size of contracts, frequently misreading them and inflating their value. It concluded more than a thousand were each worth $34 million, when in fact some were for as little as $35,000. ​

The DOGE AI tool flagged more than 2,000 contracts for “munching.” It’s unclear how many have been or are on track to be canceled — the Trump administration’s decisions on VA contracts have largely been a black box. The VA uses contractors for many reasons, including to support hospitals, research and other services aimed at caring for ailing veterans. VA officials have said they’ve killed nearly 600 contracts overall. Congressional Democrats have been pressing VA leaders for specific details of what’s been canceled without success. ​

We identified at least two dozen on the DOGE list that have been canceled so far. Among the canceled contracts was one to maintain a gene sequencing device used to develop better cancer treatments. Another was for blood sample analysis in support of a VA research project. Another was to provide additional tools to measure and improve the care nurses provide.' Propublica (a good read in it's entirety)​

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There is clearly some things that various types of "AI" (LLM, ML, etc.) are actually good at. Machine translation made huge leaps. Voice recognition, facial recognition, etc. What the "AI" models don't seem to be any good at is analysis or understanding. There is a backlash against this kind of "AI" coming. It is already building.

Fire the Inspector Generals who have a grasp on the department inner workings they police, and have some kid with no knowledge what so ever create some error prone code and kill contracts and fire Veterans.
These actions are behind the acclaimed 2Trillion, 1Trillion, 160B minus the cost of firing 135B = 25B savings.
They literally should start a agency to cover the cost of all the lawsuits by people wrongfully terminated.
They should call it Department Of Lawless Termination (DOLT).

"DOLT" --- nice work.