DOGE's error-prone AI tool flags VA contracts for cancellation

In March 2025, a DOGE engineer at the Department of Veterans Affairs built an AI tool to sort the agency's contracts. He wrote it the day after he joined. It marked contracts it judged nonessential as munchable. The tool used older OpenAI models and read only about the first 2,500 words of each contract. It flagged more than 2,000 contracts. It often misread contract values, putting over a thousand at $34 million each when some were worth about $35,000. ProPublica found at least two dozen contracts from the list already canceled. The engineer told ProPublica, "I think that mistakes were made." He said staff reviewed every cut. The VA disputed the reporting.