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).
Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Mazie Hirono (Hawaii), along with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), sent a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon after a report from The New York Times that call centers that take questions from students and families about student aid could be replaced with an AI bot.
“DOGE’s proposal threatens to misinform borrowers and families, lead to data privacy breaches, and pose conflicts of interest arising from Elon Musk’s financial stake in AI development,” the letter said.
The call centers field around 15,000 questions a 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’s employees already.
“The department is open to using tools and systems that would enhance the customer service, security and transparency of data for students and parents,” Madi Biedermann, the department’s deputy assistant secretary for communications, told The Times back in Feb. “We are evaluating all contracts to assess effectiveness relative to costs.”
The senators are concerned about problems with AI “hallucinations,” which cause chatbots to give the wrong information, along with privacy concerns.
“If not properly safeguarded, confidential information present in either the training data or in the chatbot’s past conversations could be inadvertently leaked during its interactions with other users or even obtained maliciously by bad actors,” the letter reads.
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.
“Given DOGE’s record of prioritizing chaos over competence, there is little reason to believe that DOGE’s AI chatbot would genuinely serve the needs of borrowers and families,” the Democrats wrote.
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