this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025
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Summary

Elon Musk's email illegally demanding federal employees report their weekly tasks or face “resignation" sparked immediate backlash.

FBI Director Kash Patel instructed staff to ignore it, citing internal review procedures. The State Department and DOJ also advised employees against responding, fearing ethical violations.

The email, reaching millions, including air traffic controllers, triggered widespread confusion and resistance.

Senator Tina Smith criticized Musk's "d*** boss move."

The incident highlights a potential power struggle within the Trump administration, questioning Musk's authority.

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[–] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 66 points 7 hours ago (8 children)

If nothing else, it's a completely idiotic idea.

Say there are 1 million government workers. If Muskie could read one letter a minute for ten hours a day, five days a week, it would only take him a year to get through the pile.

[–] Revan343@lemmy.ca 21 points 2 hours ago (3 children)

Oh they're just going to shovel all the responses into an LLM, ask it who they should fire, and then blindly trust it

[–] skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 hour ago

Probably the most sobering part. This is exactly what they're doing, as Muskrat is too dumb to understand how they work (and don't.) Meanwhile, the 19 year old kids accessing old COBOL systems are trusting hallucinating AIs to access them, but since the kids don't actually have the knowledge and wisdom of how COBOL works, they'll blindly trust the hallucinations.

[–] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 1 points 19 minutes ago

LLM,

Today I learned...

[–] Toofpic@feddit.dk 2 points 1 hour ago

I also imagine some government worker auditing an oil rig or an undercover cia agent - they can't fucking write letters "from their offices"

[–] jaybone@lemmy.world 13 points 4 hours ago

But elon musk is a computer science genius. Surely he passed his calc i class in undergrad. I remember my professor mentioning how long it would take you to count to 1 million.

[–] lepinkainen@lemmy.world 53 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

$42 says they’re feeding it to Grok and asking it to make decisions

[–] danc4498@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Also using the messages for training it.

[–] SarcasticCephalopod@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

Can't upvote because you are at 42. ⬆️⬆️⬆️

[–] LuxSpark@lemmy.cafe 37 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

He will probably have his lackeys read them or AI. There's not a chance musk does any work.

[–] MumboJumbo@lemmy.world 32 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Don't even need AI. Find the average length of employees' responses - Fire everyone below the average mark. Doesn't make any sense, but seems like the kind of metric Musk would use to fire people.

[–] drdalek@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 5 hours ago

This is assuming they care about responses. This is a scare tactic to scare government workers into stepping down, sowing confusion and doubt into their daily work. They are actively dismantling the government to weaken resistance against themselves

[–] WalrusDragonOnABike@reddthat.com 14 points 6 hours ago

Could be there stockpiled for excuses to target specific people to be fired and only read when they have someone they're targeting.

[–] halykthered@lemmy.ml 20 points 7 hours ago

He's not going to read them, it's to increase the workload of the workers. It's to slow down and frustrate the workers who didn't resign. He's met resistance, so now he has to apply pressure.

[–] BossDj@lemm.ee 6 points 5 hours ago

They were told to only reply back with the word "resign", so it seems they had it automated