Allies of Elon Musk’s stationed within the education department are considering replacing some contract workers who interact with millions of students and parents annually with an artificial intelligence chatbot, according to internal department documents and communications.
The proposal is part of President Donald Trump’s broader effort to shrink the federal workforce and would mark a major change in how the agency interacts with the public. The education department’s biggest job is managing billions of dollars in student aid, and it routinely fields complex questions from borrowers.
The department currently uses call centers and a rudimentary AI bot to answer questions. The proposal would introduce generative AI, a more sophisticated version of AI that could replace many of those human agents. The call centres employ 1,600 who field over 15,000 questions per day from student borrowers.
The vision could be a model for other federal agencies, in which humans are replaced by technology, and behemoth contracts with outside companies are shed or reduced in favor of more automated solutions. In some cases, that technology was developed by players from the private sector who are now working inside or with the Trump administration.