As the impacts of DOGE continue to ripple across the United States, a court case challenging DOGE cancellations of National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grants because they allegedly included diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) activities has revealed a lack of rigor in the decision-making process. It turns out DOGE staffers asked ChatGPT to help them create a list of grants to cancel.
Anthropic continues to position itself as the more ethical choice in AI. It announced the Anthropic Institute this week, a move to consolidate its ethics and research efforts, focus them on public benefit and have complex conversations transparently. It is also one of a number of leading AI companies that have collectively granted $12.5 million to The Linux Foundation to bolster open-source software security. I am sure the funds are needed, but the move is as much for their benefit as it is altruistic.
This week also saw more acquisitions of AI companies by bigger players, including takeovers by Google and IBM. And Firefox has hinted as a logo change for the legacy web browser. We might be seeing more of their cheeky mascot Kit?!
Plus: Real estate website Domain has talked up the value of investment in arts and cultural infrastructure in regional Australia on property prices, Uber founder Travis Kalanick has started food, mining and transport robotics company and social bookmarking brand Digg are doing a “hard reset” not even two moths after relaunching.
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What’s been going on?
Here's WTF happened this week:
DOGE cancelled Humanities grants scrutinised in court
Testimony in a case about DOGE’s cancellation of National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grants for including DEI reveals a lack of rigour to how decisions were made.
Back when DOGE was unleashed on the US Federal Government, Elon Musk minions were sent into agencies to reduce the size of the workforce and cut federal spending. As part of that work, Musk lackeys laid off more than 80 per cent of the staff at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and cancelled more than 1,400 grants. Recently released testimony in a court case taken by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the American Historical Association (AHA) and the Modern Language Association (MLA) over those cancellations reveals how DOGE officials managed the task.
