The Allies of Elon Musk stationed in the Department of Education plan to replace certain contractual workers who interact with millions of students and parents each year by a discussion bot on artificial intelligence, according to documents and communications of the internal department.
The proposal is part of President Trump’s broader effort to reduce the federal workforce and mark a major change in the way the agency interacts with the public. The biggest work in the education department is to manage billions of dollars in students’ assistance, and he regularly asks complex questions of borrowers.
The department currently uses both call centers and a rudimentary IA bot to answer questions. The proposal would introduce the generative AI, a more sophisticated version of artificial intelligence which could replace many of these human agents.
The call centers employ 1,600 people who answer more than 15,000 questions per day of borrowing students.
Vision could be a model for other federal agencies, in which human beings are replaced by technology, and giant contracts with external companies are lost or reduced in favor of more automated solutions. In some cases, this technology has been developed by private sector players who are now working inside or with the Trump administration.
Mr. Musk has a significant interest in the AI he founded A generative company of AIAnd also seeks to take control of Openai, One of the largest players in the industry. In other agencies, workers from the newly created government ministry, led by Mr. Musk, told federal employees that AI would be an important part Administration cost reduction plans.
A year after the Department of Education supervised a disastrous deployment of a new request for assistance to federal students, long -standing department officials say they are open to the idea of looking for greater efficiency , just like the leaders of other federal agencies. Many are associated with the efficiency initiative.
But the staff of the Ministry of Education also found that a reduction of 38% of the financing of operations of the call center could contribute to a “severe deterioration” of services for “students, borrowers and schools”, According to an internal document obtained by the Times.
Musk partners working within the Department of Education include former leaders of education technology and venture capital companies. In recent years, these industries have invested massively in the creation of AI education tools and market them in schools, educators and students.
The Musc team of the department has concentrated, in part, on a help line which is currently operated on a contractual basis by Accenture, a consulting company, according to the documents examined by the Times. The call center helps students who have questions on the request of PELL federal subsidies and other forms of support for tuition fees, or on the reimbursement of loans.
The contract which includes this work has sent more than $ 700 million to Accenture since 2019, but is expected to expire next week.
“The ministry is open to the use of tools and systems that would improve customer service, security and transparency of data for students and parents,” said Maddi Biedermann, deputy secretary of the Ministry of Communications. “We assess all contracts to assess efficiency in relation to costs.”
Accenture did not respond to interview requests. A September report of the Department of Education describes 1,625 agents meeting 462,000 calls in one month. The agents also managed 118,000 typed cats.
In addition to the call line, Accenture provides a wide range of other services to the student aid system. One of them is AidanA more rudimentary virtual assistant who answers basic questions about the help of students. He was launched in 2019, during Mr. Trump’s first term.
Accenture reported in 2021 that Aidan had transmitted 2.2 million messages in one year. But its capacities are not far from what Mr. Musk’s partners are considering construction using a generative AI, according to internal documents.
Mr. Trump and former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. ordered the federal agencies to search for opportunities for using AI to better serve the public.
The proposal to reorganize the communication system follows a collapse of the deployment of the new free request for federal aid for students, or FAFSA, last year under Mr. Biden. As FAFSA problems have caused massive confusion to students who are asking for financial assistance, several major entrepreneurs, including accenturehave been criticized for failures in the infrastructure available for students and parents looking for answers and help.
From January to May from last year, around three -quarters of the 5.4 million calls to the Ministry’s help lines remained unansweredAccording to a report by the government of the government.
More than 500 workers have since been added to call centers, and waiting times have been considerably reduced, according to the report from the September Ministry of Education.
But the transition to the use of generating AI for aid using students, to replace some or all workers in the human call center, is likely to raise questions concerning confidentiality, precision and Equal access to devices, according to technology experts.
Generative AI systems still sometimes share false information.
Given the speed with which the capacities of AI are progressing, these challenges are potentially surmountable, but should be approached methodically, without rushing, said John Bailey, member of the American Enterprise Institute and former director of educational technologies of the educational technologies of Department of Education under President George W. Bush.
Mr. Bailey has since become an expert in AI uses in education.
“Any major modernization effort must be slowly made for tests, to see what works and does not work,” he said, pointing to the The botched introduction of the new FAFSA Form like an edifying tale.
“We still have children not at university because of this,” he said.
In recent weeks, the Department of Education has absorbed a number of DOGE workers, according to two people familiar with the process, who have requested anonymity because they were not allowed to discuss security procedures of the ministry and feared for their job.
One of the people involved in DOGE efforts in the Department of Education is Brooks Morgan, who was until recently the director general of Podium Education, a start-up based in Austin, and also worked for a capital company -Risque focused on education technology, according to the two people.
According to these sources and an internal document.
And a third party is Adam Ramada, who previously worked in a venture capital company in Miami, Spring Tide Capital, which invests in health technology, according to an affidavit in a lawsuit brought against the Ministry of Government efficiency.
None of these staff members responded to interview requests.
Sheelagh McNeill,, Alain Delaquerière And Kirsten Noyes contributed research.