Concerns grow over Elon Musk's DOGE's use of a custom version of xAI's 'Grok' for government data analysis
Members of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are concerned about the use of Grok, an AI chatbot developed by xAI, an AI company owned by Musk, to analyze sensitive government data.
Exclusive: Musk's DOGE expanding his Grok AI in US government, raising conflict concerns | Reuters
DOGE started a 'survey of surveys' to end some federal data : NPR
https://www.npr.org/2025/05/23/nx-s1-5409331/doge-data-census-bureau
As its name suggests, DOGE is an agency tasked with reducing waste and inefficiency in the US government, and in order to carry out its work, it has access to federal databases that contain sensitive information, including personal information.
But experts have warned that there is a risk that Musk's xAI could gain an unfair competitive advantage over other AI service providers by using the sensitive data it has access to to train Grok.
'Given the amount of data DOGE has accumulated, the possibility that it could be used by Grok poses a serious privacy threat,' said Albert Fox Kahn of the nonprofit organization The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) .
'DOGE appears to be pressuring government departments to use Grok to enrich Musk and xAI, not the American people,' said Richard Painter, a professor at the University of Minnesota who served as an ethics adviser to President George W. Bush.
Since its inception, DOGE has been questioned about the accuracy of its work.
DOGE claims to have saved over 8 trillion yen by cutting waste, but the documents it released contain too many overestimates and simple mistakes - GIGAZINE
By Gage Skidmore
DOGE members use Grok with custom parameters to analyze data efficiently, and have instructed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees to use the same Grok, but DHS did not approve the use of Grok. Professor Painter points out that xAI's fee for using the custom version of Grok violates conflict of interest laws.
DOGE reports its results in detail on X, and on May 20, 2025, it announced that it would discontinue five of the 102 surveys, costing $16.5 million, due to the cost of additional census surveys of $2.2 billion.
Besides the Census itself, the @USCensusBureau performs 102 additional surveys costing $2.2 billion, many of them obsolete with the results not being used to drive any action nor even looked at.
— Department of Government Efficiency (@DOGE) May 20, 2025
The Census Bureau and DOGE are reviewing them one-by-one. So far, 5 wasteful…
The survey questions included: 'Have you ever had at least 12 drinks of alcohol in your life, excluding small tasters? Was this wine, a wine cooler or fortified wine?' and 'How often do you use the Internet at home?'
However, Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former congressional staffer who was involved in the census, explained that the Census Bureau's surveys are conducted to help Congress and federal agencies develop laws and policies. 'I think DOGE is trying to say that the Census Bureau is not doing its job properly, but focusing only on individual questions does not convey the intent of the survey. I think this social media post suggests that DOGE staff have little knowledge about data collection or the mission of the Census Bureau,' she said, criticizing DOGE.
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