this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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The AI.gov repository and staging site vanished when we asked questions, but don't worry – we captured backups

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[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 22 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

"all-in-one API" that will allow agencies to connect their systems to models from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic

This is a huge red flag to me.

It means:

  • They are ignorant of existing APIs and standards that are exactly this. Uh, MCP or OpenAI API? Which everyone already uses?
  • They have zero interesting in models they can host themselves, or from cheaper providers. Or, heaven forbit, finetune for their own work.
  • They have zero interest in actually useful tools. Like, say, SGLang's cached hosting and fast fill-in-the-blanks formatting which is perfect for say, processing government forms.

In other words, it's just full corporate AI Bro capture. And shitty.

One of the consequences is that it will be very bad, unfortunately.

[–] Donkter@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago

What's sad is that this is a consequence not just of this admins shittiness but of a long enshittification of our government.

Not only do government jobs pay a mediocre salary until you get really really far in the org, a fact that only gets worse as the idea of a middle class lifestyle gets gutted, but for decades now, working a government job has become less and less prestigious. It used to be that there were always plenty of loonies who found pride in being a "public servant" and thought the best place to use their genius was in government.

Now, as we see, there's no one in these positions with even cursory knowledge of how these programs work.

And there's definitely no millennials or zoomers fresh out of tech school that would debase themselves to working in government who would be able see these flaws in two seconds.

[–] PunkRockSportsFan@fanaticus.social 59 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I dream of the day the People collectively have had enough and just drag the bastards into the street and beat them until they can bastard no more.

One can dream…

[–] neuromorph@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago

He's hiding behind glass. He won't know fresh air ever again.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 34 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

The stupid is intensifying. They both a) know they can’t run a government and b) are in a rush to make something that will do all the work so they can sit back and rake in the money. No, this is not about actually making the country better because objectively LLMs suck and were never intended for such tasks.

[–] kinther@lemmy.world 7 points 12 hours ago

They are too generic and lack the specialization needed to do such tasks. It will only end in disaster

[–] JacksonLamb@lemmy.world 10 points 11 hours ago (1 children)
[–] JargonWagon@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago
[–] Xerxos@lemmy.ml 11 points 13 hours ago

Just waiting for the first decision made because of AI hallucinations.

With this government? You might get disappeared to a black site because a LLM "decided" that you probably are a terrorist...

[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 20 points 15 hours ago

What do we want? sKYNET!!!!

When do we want it? As soon as it can beat beginner atari chess?!?!

[–] JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 64 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (12 children)

Only silver lining right now is these idiots might just be too stupid to pull off creating their evil empire.

[–] PTSDwarrior@lemmy.ml 24 points 18 hours ago

This reminds me of an interview with a Ukrainian soldier, who said of the Russians “we are lucky they are so fucking stupid”. If only that translated into less air superiority by Russia, because that's where Ukraine struggles.

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[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 12 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I consider this as the final confirmation that he wants to bring the government down.

[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 16 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Trump just wants people bowing to him. His handlers are the ones with real plans. Don't let Peter Thiel run away to Argentina.

[–] Freefall@lemmy.world 3 points 10 hours ago

Trump is the disposable face of something much darker. He is a tool.

[–] InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago

More like don't let them bring Argentina here. Their current president is an ancap and the inspiration behind doge.

[–] titey@jlai.lu 61 points 20 hours ago (3 children)

DB_PASS="postgres" 😬😬😬

[–] Nobilmantis@feddit.it 7 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I mean it is called ".env_example" afterall... Probably a env file to use for testing, no?

[–] forgeddit@sopuli.xyz 9 points 13 hours ago

I'm really shocked by the confidence people have here with clearly zero knowledge.

".env_example" is literally just the example/template which is only updated if new "config" items are needed and it doesn't contain actual secrets.

Developers copy ".env"/prod and ".env_local" files, which are used for the specific environments. These are in .gitignore so that they're not accidentally pushed to .git.

For production the ".env" is generated during deployment from secrets in a locked up environment. (I mean they COULD fuck this up, but there's no evidence of this AFAIK)

The example postgres password is simply a "hello world" type password that is often used when running a local docker image of the DB so you can get a full dev environment running in a couple minutes, as mentioned in the readme.md: https://github.com/gsa-tts-archived/ai-gov-api

It's not even a testing environment, it's a temporary local/dev DB just so you can test your code.

I am NOT defending this project, but holy shit this thread is full of misinformation and I had to correct this.

[–] Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 9 points 19 hours ago (4 children)

so, uh... can you ELI5 this for those of us that don't know anything?

[–] forgeddit@sopuli.xyz 6 points 12 hours ago

The person you replied to doesn't know what they're talking about. It's just an example password used for running a local empty DB for development and has nothing to do with production or even test databases.

You can see this in the readme: https://archive.softwareheritage.org/browse/origin/directory/?origin_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fgsa-tts-archived%2Fai-gov-api

See my longer previous comment if you want to know more. And again, not defending this project, but this whole comment chain was just misinformation.

[–] crookfingerjake@lemmy.world 36 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

The type of database they are using is called "postgres", which is also it's password.

[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 5 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

They should've used "1234"

[–] faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 6 points 10 hours ago

That's the combo on my luggage!

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[–] lepinkainen@lemmy.world 10 points 16 hours ago

It’s like having your password set to “password”

[–] ohshit604@sh.itjust.works 15 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

Postgres, SQLite, etc are tools for database management, things like user data, application data and so on are collected here.

Edit: the DB_PASS=“postgres” is the default password when setting up a Postgres database.

Take Reddit’s Karma system or Upvotes/Downvotes for example, they’re stored in a database and however Reddit wants to utilize that data Postgres makes it easy to call upon it.

I’m sure others can give more detailed responses, I’m typing this out in a rush.

[–] theherk@lemmy.world 9 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Interesting that you chose Reddit as an example. They have a fascinating origin story with respect to data mart. Early Reddit had just two tables: Thing and Data, where Thing was metadata about types and Data was a three column table with: type, id, and value.

Wrap your head around that. All of Reddit, two tables. A database couldn’t be less normalized (final boss of normal forms) and they did it in an rdb. So horrific it’s actually kind of cool.

[–] ohshit604@sh.itjust.works 2 points 12 hours ago

Interesting that you chose Reddit as an example.

I was in a rush! Honestly it was the quickest thing I could come up with on the spot, plus database tools are something I lack a lot of knowledge about so I really couldn’t go in depth even if I wanted to.

Appreciate the history behind Reddit’s database!

[–] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 7 points 19 hours ago (1 children)
[–] ArtVandelay@lemmy.world 8 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Unfortunately no, it seems. Somebody at least had the bare minimum sense to let GitHub generate the .gitignore for them, which includes most common environment files. https://github.com/gsa-tts-archived/ai.gov/blob/main/.gitignore

[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

It is like a bunch of evil kids are in control

[–] thepenismightier@lemm.ee 2 points 9 hours ago

It's exactly like that.

[–] overload@sopuli.xyz 68 points 1 day ago

Move fast and break things is not good when government is involved.

[–] RejZoR@lemmy.ml 154 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They are even dumber than Leslie Nielsen as American president in his parodies.

[–] latenightnoir@lemmy.blahaj.zone 68 points 1 day ago (3 children)

This was the feeling!!! I couldn't put my finger on just how this entire thing felt to me, you've cleared the skies and allowed the light of recollection to meet my shores!

It feels like 70s-80s slapstick!

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[–] Tetsuo@jlai.lu 90 points 1 day ago

Well good luck to you guys in the US. This AI government will be extremely dangerous. An all knowing advertisement algorithm reaching deep in government data with an unsafe LLM on top? Ouch.

[–] als@lemmy.blahaj.zone 49 points 1 day ago

I want off Mr Bone's wild ride

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 22 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I hate that all of the worst things Donald is planning are slated for July 4.

[–] kerntucky@infosec.pub 7 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I'm out of the loop; what's being planned for the 4th of July?

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 7 points 17 hours ago

That's the deadline Donald set for the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill as well.

[–] cmder@lemmy.world 23 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Super earth's managed democracy was supposed to be satire...

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