kinda cynical, but that $1 per year will probably cost $1000 per year in red tape, getting approvals, managing information security, cutting the check, answering the questions of "How do i get access? Can I ask it how to train my dog?" "What courses and certifications exist, and will they be provided at no charge?" and the union telling employees "you shouldnt use this because it threats your job, or if you feel scared" ...
Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce
121–130 of 187 posts
Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce
#122$1 for the next year and once you are embedded, jack up prices. That’s not exactly a new trick. Lots of cool training data to collect too.
I will admit i thought the same initially. But the article does say
> ChatGPT Enterprise already does not use business data, including inputs or outputs, to train or improve OpenAI models. The same safeguards will apply to federal use.
Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce
#123Why?
Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are 2.2 million federal workers. If you can't think of anywhere that tools like this could improve productivity, it speaks more to your lack of imagination or lack of understanding of what federal workers do than anything intrinsic to the technology.
If it were so easy, why didn't you post a few examples rather than insult me?
US Forest Service: 'hi chatgpt, here are three excel files showing the last three years of tree plantings we've done by plot and by species. Here's a fourth file in PDF format of our plot map. Please match the data and give me a list of areas that are underplanted relative to the rest, so we can plan better for this year'
I use it for stuff like this all the time in a non-government job. 100% doable without AI but takes an order of magnitude as much time. No hyperbole. People here talking about security risks are smart to think things through, but overestimate the sensitivity of most government work. I don't want the CIA using chatgpt to analyze and format lists of all our spies in China, but for the other 2.19m federal workers it's probably less of a huge deal.
Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce
#125Should be fine as long as these government workers never have to use it for basic arithmetic. After all, when do governments deal with actual numbers?
What is 10,286x953751?
ChatGPT said: 10,286 × 953,751 = 9,817,342,086
Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce
#126Without proper training, please don't.
Who gets to define “proper training”? I’m just in the “please don’t” camp full stop. It’s a bad idea.
Blanket application of any AI is a bad idea, hence to requirement for training. It's probably a reasonable tool for many application, but government produce a ton of data/documented which no one reads until they have to. There is a very real chance that those documents will be filled with junk and em dashes and we end up in a "Computer says no" scenarios, but no one can actually explain why it would say no.
People make mistakes too, but that's sort of understood, and even then getting the government to admit and fix mistakes is hard. Having a computer backing up government clerk number 5 isn't going to make it easier to disagree with various decisions.
Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce
#127$1 for the next year and once you are embedded, jack up prices. That’s not exactly a new trick. Lots of cool training data to collect too.
It would make sense for a company to pay the government for the privilege of inserting themselves into the data flow.
By charging an extremely low amount, they position it as something which should be paid for while removing the actual payment friction.
It’s all obviously strategic lock-in. One hopes the government is smart enough to know that and account for it, but we are all understandably very cynical about the government’s ability to function reasonably.
Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm predicting for non-enterprise that eventually ads will be added in some way. Google has been doing this since May. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-30/google-pl...
How do you get an AI model to serve ads to the user without risking misalignment, insofar as users typically don’t want ads in responses?
I can't find the paper now, but Google had an award winning paper for merging outputs of a model and multiple agents to embed products and advertisements into prompt responses.
Yes, it also has provisioning for AI agents to bid for the slot, and the highest bidder gets the place.
Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce
#129OK, so every agentic prompt injection concern and/or data access concern basically immediately becomes worst case scenario with this, right? There is now some sort of "official AI tool" that you as a Federal employee can use, and thus like any official tool, you assume it's properly vetted/secure/whatever, and also assume your higher ups want you to use it (since they are providing it to you), so now you're not worri…
knock knock on your door. You open to a police officer. He announces: "as an AI Language model I have determined you are in violation of US. Code 12891.12.151. We have a plane to El Salvador standing by. If you'll please come with me, sir.
AI isn't causing the suspension of habeas corpus, humans are.
Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce
#130I'm struggling to think of a federal job in which having ChatGPT would make them more productive. I can think of many ways to generate more bullshit and emails, however. Can someone help me out?
In cybersecurity, which in some departments is a lot of paper pushing based around RMF, ChatGPT would be a welcome addition. Most people working with RMF don't know what they're talking about, don't have the engineering background to validate their own risk assessment claims against reality, and I would trust ChatGPT over them.