Elon Musk Ally tells staff ‘Ai-First’ is the future of the key government agency

At a meeting on Monday morning, Thomas Shedd, director of recently appointed and ally technology transformation services of Elon Musk, told the workers of the General Services Administration that the new administrator of the agency is looking for a “strategy of strategy of Ai-First, “the sources tell Wired.

Throughout the meeting, Shedd shared his vision of a GSA that operates as a “starting software company”, automating different internal tasks and centralization of data from the entire federal government.

Monday’s meeting, held in person and Google Meet, occurs days after Wired reported that many of Musk’s associates have migrated to work at the highest levels of the GSA and the staff management office (OPM) . Before joining TTS, which is within the GSA, Shedd was a software engineer in Tesla, one of Musk’s companies. The transition has caused a massive confusion among GSA employees who have been thrown into individual surprise meetings, forced to present their code, often the young engineers who did not identify themselves, and stayed wondering what the future of the working group is Technological agency will look like.

Shedd tried to answer these questions on Monday, providing details about a series of projects that the agency will continue in the coming weeks and months. His particular approach, the sources say, was a greater role for AI not only in GSA, but in agencies throughout the government.

In what he described as a “A-First strategy,” says the sources, Shedd provided a handful of examples of projects that Gsa Stephen Ehikian’s interim administrator is looking to prioritize, including the development of “AI coding agents” that would be Available for all agencies. Shedd made it clear that he believes that much of the work in TTS and the widest government, particularly around financial tasks, could be automated.

“This increases the red flags,” a cybersecurity expert who received anonymity due to retaliation concerns to Wired on Monday, told Wired on Monday, who said that automating the government is not the same as automating other things, such as cars autonomous. Especially the people who are not experts in the subject’s domain, entering projects often think ‘this is silly’ and then discover how difficult the thing really is. “

Shedd instructed employees to think about TTS as a software startup that had become financially unstable. He suggested that the federal government needs a centralized data repository, and that it was actively working with others in a strategy to create one, although it was not clear where this repository would be based or if these projects would comply with privacy laws. Shedd referred to these concerns as an “obstacle” and said that the agency should still advance to see what was possible.

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The sources say that during the so -called Shedd, the TTS and digital services of the United States, braking as the Dogle service of the United States, or Doge, under Trump, as “pillars” of a new technological strategy. Later at the meeting, he said that there was no plan to merge the two groups and that the projects would flow through them depending on the available staff and experience, but continued to emphasize the next collaboration between TTS and Doge.

Employees, according to sources, also asked questions about young engineers, who had not previously identified in meetings. Shedd said that one of them felt comfortable enough to appear at the meetings on Monday, the sources say, although Shedd added that he was nervous by their publicly revealed names and their lives overturned.

Shedd could not answer many staff questions about deferred resignations, the mandate back to the office or if the agency’s staff would face substantial cuts, according to the sources. At one point, Shedd said the workforce cuts were probably for TTS, but refused to give more details. (Similar questions were also asked about the efficiency leadership of the Government Department at a Friday meeting reported for the first time by Wired).

Towards the end of the call, Sources say, a TTS worker asked if it would be expected to work more than 40 hours per week, to treat the entire next job and the workers potentially fired. Shedd replied that he was “unclear.”