Federal government agencies are reportedly using an artificial intelligence tool from Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative to identify regulations to cut, with a goal of cutting about half from a list of 200,000 federal rules.
The tool, the “DOGE AI Deregulation Tool,” is already in use at the Department of Housing and Urban Development as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, The Washington Post reports.
The U.S. Doge Service described using the tool to analyze about 200,000 regulations to find ones that officials believe are neither necessary nor legally required, with a goal of cutting half by next January and saving the government trillions of dollars in spending by the anniversary of Trump’s inauguration, according to a PowerPoint presentation obtained by The Post.
The DOGE tool has already been used to review more than 1,000 “regulatory sections” at the housing department, as well as to drive “100% of deregulations” at the consumer protection bureau, according to the presentation.
The White House and the housing agency described the efforts as preliminary.
“The DOGE experts creating these plans are the best and brightest in the business and are embarking on a never-before-attempted transformation of government systems and operations to enhance efficiency and effectiveness,” an administration spokesperson told the newspaper.
The Independent requested comment from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, one of the architects of the DOGE program, once mused about mass-deleting federal spending by culling large numbers of government workers.
“If your Social Security number ends in an odd number, you’re out. If it ends in an even number, you’re in,” he said in an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman in September. “There’s a 50 percent cut right there. Of those who remain, if your Social Security number starts in an even number, you’re in, and if it starts with an odd number, you’re out. Boom. That’s a 75 percent reduction done.”
Musk left the Trump administration in May, and in that time, DOGE failed to achieve the trillion-dollar cuts to federal spending the billionaire suggested might be possible.
The effort — housed in a government tech agency renamed as the U.S. DOGE Service via executive order signed by the president,— was met with sharp criticism from Democratic officials, as well as scores of lawsuits from agency employees and advocacy groups arguing the initiative flouted key parts of transparency rules, federal rule-making guidelines, and budget laws.
In its first six months, the Trump administration implemented actions reducing regulatory costs by $86 billion and 52.2 million hours in paperwork, according to the American Action Forum.
