When DOGE Unleashed ChatGPT on the Humanities
Trump administration officials used ChatGPT to rapidly cancel previously approved NEH grants based on DEI concerns.Summary
Documents reveal that during the Trump administration, two employees from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency used ChatGPT to review and cancel previously approved National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grants. The mandate was to cut grants that conflicted with President Trump’s agenda, specifically by checking for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) relevance. Employees fed short project summaries into the AI chatbot with the prompt: “Does the following relate at all to D.E.I.? Respond factually in less than 120 characters. Begin with ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’” This sweeping, automated process led to the cancellation of diverse projects, including work on an Indigenous languages archive, digitizing Black newspapers, a scholarly series on American music history, and even a documentary about Jewish women's Holocaust labor, all flagged for promoting diversity or amplifying marginalized voices.
(Source：Nytimes)