RT @majorityfm: DOGE's VA Ai Disaster; L.A. Vs ICE w/ Brandon Roberts, Memo Torres | @bxroberts • @el_tragon_de_LA • @LATACO | Majority Rep….

RT @JustinElliott: NEW story: . @KristiNoem secretly took a cut of political donations and then failed to disclose it .

Our latest: Why some potentially contaminated drugs are still allowed into the U.S., despite FDA knowledge of issues like filthy labs and falsified records. We dug into the data and identified 70 hospitalizations and nine deaths related to these drugs.

RT @charlesornstein: IMPACT: Senators Demand Transparency on Canceled VA Contracts @bxroberts @VernalColeman.

RT @shl: The code is open source:

12/ We will continue investigating the administration’s use of artificial intelligence within the federal government. If you have a tip about governmental uses of AI, reach out to me on Signal at brandonrobertz.01 - for VA tips contact Vernal Coleman on Signal at vcoleman91.99.

11/ Many inside the VA, however, told ProPublica that the process for reviewing contracts was so opaque they couldn’t even see who made the ultimate decisions to kill specific contracts. Here’s our full story:.

10/ When we reached out to the VA press secretary, he told us that contract decisions go through multiple reviews by employees, and also the VA would not cancel crucial contracts without a contingency plan:

9/ Of the 2,000 contracts Lavingia’s tool flagged for “munching,” we identified at least two dozen that have already been canceled, including contracts to develop better cancer treatments and improve nursing care. It’s unclear how many total have been or will be cut.

8/ The VA is also standing behind its use of AI to identify “munchable” contracts, calling it “a commonsense precedent.”. Documents released to ProPublica indicate they may even be looking at using it for other VA operations, such as processing disability claims.

7/ Trump officials have said they are working toward a “goal” of cutting ~80,000 of the VA’s workforce of nearly 500,000. But the VA has not explained how it plans to simultaneously move services in-house, as Lavingia’s code suggested was the plan, while also slashing staff.

6/ You can see his code for yourself. We broke down the prompts Lavingia used in detail here:.

5/ We shared the code for the tool and the VA contracts it flagged with experts. “AI is absolutely the wrong tool for this,” one of them said.

4/ Even Sahil Lavingia, the programmer, agreed there were problems. This is what he told us:

3/ Second, the DOGE AI tool’s underlying instructions were deeply flawed. The system was programmed to make intricate judgments based on the first few pages of each VA contract — about 2,500 words — which contain only sparse summary information.

2/ First, the DOGE AI tool produced glaring mistakes. It often hallucinated the size of contracts, inflating their value. It concluded more than a thousand were each worth $34 million, when in fact some were for as little as $35,000.

THREAD: An ex-DOGE engineer with no government or medical experience used AI to identify which Veterans Affairs contracts to kill, labeling them as “MUNCHABLE.”. @VernalColeman @ericuman and I got the code. Here’s what it tells us 1/.

Job alert ‼️. We're looking for someone to join us for a two-year fellowship, helping us responsibly leverage AI in our tip/lead/scoop gathering process.

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