DOGE: A 21-year-old student pilot the AI who rewrites housing laws in the United States
The American Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is currently the scene of a curious bureaucratic ballet. At its head, not a senior official, but a student, Chris Sweet, commissioned by The very controversial initiative DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency)an unofficial organ associated with Elon Musk.
His task? Use artificial intelligence to rewrite, rationalize – or even delete – HUD regulations, with “optimized” efficiency. Reality raises vertiginous questions about interference, legitimacy and security.
A student responsible for rewriting laws thanks to AI in the United States
Christopher Sweet, 21, still in license at the University of Chicago, was officially appointed “special assistant” within the HUD, but rather officiates as an “Analyst”, in the words of his colleagues. This young man without administrative experience is required to compare HUD’s internal regulations to original laws using an artificial intelligence model. Objective displayed: flush out the “Regulatory excesses” And propose a more “refined” language.
The tool he uses generates calculation sheets containing thousands of recommendations, going so far as to indicate the rate of “Non-compliance” estimated texts. The internal services must then validate or contest the suggestions of the AI, before the modifications are dressed in the legal department. The model would even be in the development phase to be applied to the whole government.
But this project arouses strong concerns. Several members of the HUD denounce a bypass of conventional procedures, imposed by law (administrative procedure act). Others point to the total lack of transparency: who controls AI? How are decisions justified? And what does a student do in this ultra-sensitive institutional mechanism?
Because behind this case, it is a whole vision of the state that we see emerging: a government reduced to lines of code, piloted by outsiders, sometimes in defiance of democratic safeguards. Remember that no later than this weekend, Elon Musk judged that the Doge was “not efficient”explaining that he would now have two to three days a week.
