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... Staffer had no medical experience, and the results were predictably, spectacularly bad.
As the Trump administration prepared to cancel contracts at the Department of Veterans Affairs this year, officials turned to a software engineer with no health care or government experience to guide them.
The engineer, working for the Department of Government Efficiency, quickly built an artificial intelligence tool to identify which services from private companies were not essential. He labeled those contracts "MUNCHABLE."
The code, using outdated and inexpensive AI models, produced results with glaring mistakes. For instance, it hallucinated the size of contracts, frequently misreading them and inflating their value. It concluded more than a thousand were each worth $34 million, when in fact some were for as little as $35,000.
The DOGE AI tool flagged more than 2,000 contracts for "munching." It's unclear how many have been or are on track to be canceled"the Trump administration's decisions on VA contracts have largely been a black box. The VA uses contractors for many reasons, including to support hospitals, research, and other services aimed at caring for ailing veterans.
VA officials have said they've killed nearly 600 contracts overall. Congressional Democrats have been pressing VA leaders for specific details of what's been canceled without success. ...
