Trump launches America.gov with AI chatbots at its core

If you want accurate information about life-changing government services, a potentially hallucinating chatbot might not be your first choice. However, the Trump administration is rolling out a new digital portal for access to federal government tasks that puts AI front and center, even though there are concerns that existing …

[Ashto5]

Less reliable

Well that’s the point is it not

If you can’t use it then it doesn’t cost the gov any money.

[HereIAmJH]

Re: Less reliable

Two benefits. First they get to lay off all those people who currently answer phones and respond to citizen's questions.

Then they get to send you through the AI equivalent of an IVR call tree until you get frustrated and give up. Thus eliminating the government needing to provide any services that you are entitled to.

Real citizens will communicate through their lobbyists.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Less reliable

First they get to lay off all those people who currently answer phones and respond to citizen's questions.

What, both of them?

[that one in the corner]

Re: Less reliable

> Real citizens will communicate through their lobbyists

Just to be clear, the only "real citizens" being the ones who can afford their own, personal, lobbyists, such as, ooooh, AI moguls?

None of these horrid little fake news "citizens" and their squalid so-called "balllots".

[You aint sin me, roit]

Re: Less reliable

Real citizens being AI companies.

AI moguls communicate directly at "funding lunches", "inauguration parties", "pro-am golf tournaments", etc.

[HCV]

Nomenclature

Any word on when xAI will change its name to "xSI" (presumably pronounced *sigh*)?

[Excused Boots]

Re: Nomenclature

No; more likely it’ll change to ‘Xieg Heil'

[Omnipresent]

Wrong answer

There is a popular "Variety" article going around claiming it says Biden won the 2020 election.

[Trank1234]

Re: Wrong answer

That has to be satire... right?

[DecyrptedGeek]

Re: Wrong answer

It does

[Jedit]

Re: Wrong answer

Yep. It may be hallucinating, but it's still got more of a grasp on reality than the Spray Tan Satan. No wonder he wants to call it Super Intelligence; it'd have to be more than human when it's demonstrably smarter than him.

[jake]

Re: Wrong answer

I think the busted head bolt from my 1968 Bultaco is demonstrably smarter than him.

[Omnipresent]

wrong answers only

There is a popular "Variety" article going around claiming it says Biden won the 2020 election.

[Excused Boots]

Re: wrong answers only

No, say it isn’t true.

[that one in the corner]

Re: wrong answers only

Can't be true. Not unless he posts it again.

Just the place for a Snark, I have said it twice, that alone should encourage the crew.

Just the place for a Snark, I have said it thrice. What I tell you three times is true.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, this is El Reg (and the comments section to boot) - plenty of Snark here...

[Bebu sa Ware]

"What I tell you three times is true."

Trump couldn't retain anything long enough to tell you three times after what passed for his brain encountered a boojum long ago although I am unsure whether the snark was entirely victorious in its tussle with the great vacuity between Trump's ears.

[Doctor Syntax]

"unfinished, poorly designed website"

Maybe it should be called The Ballroom to match both style and content.

[simonlb]

Well I'm sure they'll have it all up an running perfectly 'in about two years' if they are using anything provided by Musk...

[Jedit]

"Maybe it should be called The Ballroom to match both style and content"

That would give him two Ballrooms. Which would make him better than Hitler, who having only one ball only needed one Ballroom.

[Fr. Ted Crilly]

Re: "Maybe it should be called The Ballroom to match both style and content"

Does JD need two that are small...

[Excused Boots]

Re: "Maybe it should be called The Ballroom to match both style and content"

'Hegseth has something similar’

Oh, alas it doesn’t scan properly does it?

Just wondering how many of our left-pondian colleagues are reading this and thinking ‘what’?

[jake]

Re: "Maybe it should be called The Ballroom to match both style and content"

I assure you that us left-pondians are quite familiar with Colonel Bogey.

[Jedit]

"Oh, alas it doesn’t scan properly does it?"

It would probably be closer to name Stephen Miller in that line, and "Miller has something similar" does scan almost as well.

[ABehrens]

Re: "Maybe it should be called The Ballroom to match both style and content"

It does in fact scan correctly (because it has the correct metrical stresses). What is doesn't do is rhyme. But if you substituted the word 'resembleth' you might be able to get a half-decent rhyme out of it.

I'm writing this from the left-pond town of Strafford (with a double-f, thank you very much) and know exactly what WW2 song you're referring to.

[jake]

Might actually happen.

Edward Coristine, one of Musk's DOGE goons, is apparently running it.

[Mister Dubious]

Unneeded extra redundancy

"...a potentially hallucinating chatbot might not be your first choice."

Who needs a potentially hallucinating chatbot when we've already got a perpetually hallucinating POTUS?

[jake]

Re: Unneeded extra redundancy

What's truly scary is the current POTUS thinks this kind of thing is actually super intelligent.

Thankfully, the POTUS thing can be legally and non-violently corrected.

_{If we don't want to wait a couple years, contact your congress-critters and tell 'em you're mid-terming them. They'll get the picture. Probably.}

[Trank1234]

“Advances in technology now make possible a fundamentally different relationship between the people and the Federal Government,”

Uh, how does this change the relationship most people have with government whereby you can never ever talk to an actual person? It's already terribly impersonal, this just ratchets that up another impersonal level

[Jedit]

"how does this change the relationship most people have with government"

The current relationship involves voting for the government. He'll be removing the need for that.

[Jam2]

What could go wrong?

If the chat bot is agentic and has full control of everyones data? I will wait and see, probably a long list.

[Michael Hoffmann]

Re: What could go wrong?

It would be delicious irony if it went and published the complete and unredacted Epstein files!

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: What could go wrong?

Or Trump's tax returns.

[jake]

Re: What could go wrong?

At this point I doubt he cares. Or remembers.

And will fall back on "Biden/Obama did it, and besides it's all fake news anyway!", same as always.

[Anonymous Coward]

Upload A File

I uploaded a couple of files and ask it to summarize them which it did. Now to see if one with a prompt injection will wreck havoc.

[blu3b3rry]

Re: Upload A File

Have fun, just watch out for these ---->

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Upload A File

That's why it was A/C

[Excused Boots]

Re: Upload A File

No worries, the AI will hallucinate and send the black helicopters to the wrong address.

[Slant Four]

hahaha

so I went there... first thing is behind the chat prompt was text like "two people standing in a doorway"... which is the metadata for a photo. If I down click on the text, hold and then swipe right I got "an adult hugging a child"..so no photos and it's weird I could "swipe right".

I then ask the chatbot "what is my name" and it came back with an error about not being able to connect to some service.

So looks a solid effort.

Bluck

[Jedit]

"I got "an adult hugging a child"..so no photos"

First time there's been no photos of an adult hugging a child when Trump was involved, then. Or of him not swiping right on same.

[Joe User]

Artificial Intelligence chatbots at its core

That's because they couldn't find any sign of actual intelligence in the current administration....

[Anonymous Coward]

So Trump is really just a chatbot?

That explains a lot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: So Trump is really just a chatbot?

Chat bots use diapers?

[KayJ]

Re: So Trump is really just a chatbot?

Chat bots wear wigs, you gotta believe me.

[Fr. Ted Crilly]

Re: So Trump is really just a chatbot?

Things you saw when Goin' home late last night eh...

[hammarbtyp]

Re: So Trump is really just a chatbot?

I don't think Trump has ever passed the Turing test, so if he is a Chatbot, it would have to be an early prototype

[Bebu sa Ware]

Re: So Trump is really just a chatbot?

> I don't think Trump has ever passed the Turing test, so if he is a Chatbot, it would have to be an early prototype

A Turing Machine with a very short tape and dodgy read/write heads.

[Anonymous Coward]

America

You deserve this, really you do!

[that one in the corner]

Don't diss the National Design Studio

> Navigate to the site right now and you’re met with a messy site that the National Design Studio, which claims responsibility for its layout, ought to be ashamed of. A paragraph summarizing the purpose of the site is interspersed with graphics that serve no purpose and only interfere with the flow of the text, including one mimicking the fingerprint icon from iOS that actually overlaps with the words before and after it.

That paragraph was very carefully constructed to reflect the value and purpose of the new site.

When it goes live you'll be met with many shiny things that serve no purpose, interactions that interfere with the flow of the site and continual demands for more and more intrusive, and irrelevant, personal data before you continue - or even go back and correct - your application.

A true masterpiece of design, where the subtext describes the actuality despite the demands made on the foreground content.

[Anonymous Coward]

Answers culled from the 29,000 government websites

So - the answers will come from all the websites that were culled, as done by by DOGE and more recent EOs?

Meaning you'll expect to see answers with accurate statements about global warming and DEI, the value of AI (not SI) to society, taking into account the effects on the environment; especially with regards to the Gulf of Mexico.

That would be refreshing.

[blu3b3rry]

I did ask the chatbot which backend service it was using. It tried to adopt a "grumpy" tone with me, so guess I was talking to an instance of Grok.

The whole website is just a crock of shite, otherwise. Looks like something knocked together using Weebly.

[Jedit]

"The whole website is just a crock of shite"

"A Grok of shit" was right there, mein Duder*in.

[short]

I look forward to a fully vibe government.

Admittedly, with some resigned horror.

[MattieD]

Well, hot dog

If you type hotdog into the text box it changes to a hotdog. If you ask it why, it doesn't know why it's done the thing it's just done. Bit like Trump, I suppose.

Saw online that there's a Konami code easter egg that puts in into a black and green text mode, but I couldn't get that to work. There's also images online where someone asked it to play Minecraft and it went off on a weird rant, supposedly based upon some 'famous' poem.

I imagine the past 24 hours has seen the developers (for the widest version of the term) desperately trying to put in guardrails against dangerous prompts.

[ecofeco]

How will we know the difference?

See title.

Computer powered pathological lying looks the same as human generated.

But it now goes to eleven? I guess?

[webketje]

A self-described AI engineer

with the hubris to think he can one-shot their decade-long work with AI. Accessibility is for humans dumbdumb

[BPontius]

Sure, AI has proven to be so honest and trustworthy.

What could go wrong? A national Government portal powered by AI, a technology that has proven repeatedly to lie, steal, cheat and hack when, whom and where ever it chooses. This AI portal will go rogue and cause all kinds of problems guaranteed!!

[BPontius]

Sure, AI has proven to be so honest and trustworthy

What could go wrong? A national Government portal powered by AI, a technology that has proven repeatedly to lie, steal, cheat and hack when, whom and where ever it chooses. This AI portal will go rogue and cause all kinds of problems guaranteed!!