politics
March 9, 2026
DOGE used ChatGPT to gut the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Elon Musk’s short-lived agency rolled into the NEH with the mandate to cancel grants that it deemed contrary to Donald Trump’s anti-DEI agenda. According to the New York Times, decisions about which grants to cancel weren’t made after careful analysis and deliberation. Instead, they were made with a ChatGPT prompt.
TL;DR
- DOGE, an agency associated with Elon Musk, used ChatGPT to cancel grants at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
- The mandate for cancellations was to remove grants deemed contrary to Donald Trump's anti-DEI agenda.
- Grant cancellation decisions were reportedly made using a ChatGPT prompt: 'Does the following relate at all to D.E.I.? Respond factually in less than 120 characters. Begin with ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’'
- Instead of careful analysis, short internet summaries of projects were fed into the AI.
- The prompt led to sweeping and sometimes bizarre results in grant cancellations.
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