BY: GENEVIEVE BLUMBERG, STAFF WRITER
Last March, two members of the Department of Government Efficiency used ChatGPT to cancel previously approved federal grants that did not support President Donald Trump’s agenda, according to a New York Times article titled, “When DOGE Unleashed ChatGPT on the Humanities.”
According to the New York Times, the two employees, under Elon Musk’s department of government efficiency, fed ChatGPT short summaries of the federally funded grants and asked “Does the following relate at all to D.E.I. Respond factually in less than 120 characters. Begin with ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’”
Based on the responses by ChatGPT, several grants were cut because they supported DEI, which goes against President Trump’s plan for a “clean slate” and his “America First” agenda, according to the New York Times.
Since 1965, the year of its founding, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has supported over 70,000 projects and awarded more than $6.5 million. In a motion filed on March 3, plaintiffs argued that the members of DOGE chose grants to terminate based on a connection to “DEI” or the Biden administration, according to the motion for summary judgment documents.
The grant cancellations took back nearly half the agency’s annual budget by cutting grants on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, and other characteristics, according to the New York Times article and a legal motion for judgment filed by the American Council of Learned Societies and The Authors Guild.
When asked how these terminations have affected St. Bonaventure University, David Hilmey, provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, said that one grant was rescinded.
“We did have the final year of a three-year National Endowment for the Humanities grant rescinded by the Federal Government related to our Seneca partnership,” said Hilmey. “The funds were used to help with training and education in Seneca culture.”
St. Bonaventure has remained dedicated to the mission values of compassion, wisdom, and integrity, and thus used internal funds to continue educating students on Seneca culture, according to Hilmey.
“We were impacted by that loss, but we minimized the impact by continuing to provide internal funds to support the work that the grant established,” said Hilmey.
While the ethical implications of ChatGPT and AI use are called into question at the federal level, Hilmey says that St. Bonaventure is committed to educating its students on LLMs for an ever-changing world.
“We are not backing away from our commitment to AI. It’s a reality we must confront and prepare our students for in an evolving workplace that will demand those skills,” said Hilmey. “Our goal is to implement AI use in an ethical and responsible fashion.”
ChatGPT and AI continue to influence decisions at the highest levels of government, but for universities, policymakers and the public alike, the challenge moving forward will be ensuring that this innovation does not come at the expense of values like integrity, accuracy, and inclusivity.
