Inside the Trump administration's AI fever dream

Perhaps you’re wondering what Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency plan on doing once they finish wrecking the federal government. The answer is as depressing as it is stupid: artificial intelligence. The idea that government can basically be run by X’s chatbot Grok is one cooked up by feverish man-toddlers with little understanding of what government does—or, for that matter, what AI can do.

After exaggerating Social Security fraud, we’ll need an AI to find it all

Frank Bisignano, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Social Security Administration, told CNBC that “we build AI to find fraud, waste, and abuse for a living.” It’s not really clear who “we” is in that sentence, since the government doesn’t build AI “for a living,” but that’s the least of the problem here.

It’s not that AI can’t be used to detect fraud. During the Biden administration, the Treasury Department used AI to detect fraud and improper payments, helping to recover over $4 billion in 2024. Fraud increased dramatically during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, primarily related to fraudulent state employment claims and fraudulent distribution of COVID-19 funds to businesses.

Despite its success, the administration doesn’t seem interested in extending that work. Instead, Musk has invented the idea that millions of dead Americans are collecting Social Security, based largely on the fact that he doesn’t understand the database at all. Now we need an imaginary AI to fix that imaginary problem.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/7/2314168/-Inside-the-Trump-administration-s-AI-fever-dream