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Today's Topics:
1. InfoAge: 'Tech workers quit DOGE to protest Musk's orders'
(Roger Clarke)
2. Google Gemini?s AI coding tool is now free (Stephen Loosley)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2025 15:14:13 +1100
From: Roger Clarke <[email protected]>
To: link <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] InfoAge: 'Tech workers quit DOGE to protest Musk's
orders'
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
[ A cynic might argue that tech workers who know they're about to be
flung out on the street are well-advised to make a show of
publicly-spirited, honourable behaviour and resiogn before being sacked.
[ A moderate might express surprise and concern about not just the
dramatic shift to the loony right in the political direction of US
government agencies, but also the massive loss of corporate memory and
basic competencies.
[ Thinking about the next steps for the "engineers, product managers,
designers, data scientists, and IT and operations specialists who worked
for the United States Digital Service (USDS)", some will be justified in
being robustly self-confident in their ability to walk into decent and
worthwhile jobs elsewhere.
[ But that may not be the experience for all of them, and there's a very
limited safety-net such as notice-or-payment-in-lieu, transitional
training, union-won protections, or professional society support mechanisms.
Tech workers quit DOGE to protest Musk's orders
Billionaire's team accused of 'breaking critical systems'.
Tom Williams
Feb 27 2025 11:59 AM
https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2025/tech-workers-quit-doge-to-protest-musk-s-orders.html
At least 21 technology workers at a United States government agency have
quit en masse in the wake of their organisation being folded into Elon
Musk?s DOGE, whose controversial actions they say do not align with the
goals of public servants.
DOGE ? short for the Department of Government Efficiency, and also a
reference to a cryptocurrency memecoin ? is an entity partly led by Musk
which was created to "provide advice and guidance from outside of
government?.
The group has been central to decisions to cut US government spending
since Donald Trump returned as US president in January, with thousands
of government employees fired or removed on buyouts, and Diversity,
Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs rolled back.
The resigning tech workers were engineers, product managers, designers,
data scientists, and IT and operations specialists who worked for the
United States Digital Service (USDS), which was renamed DOGE under an
executive order signed by Trump last month.
Some of the workers had reportedly left senior roles with companies such
as Google and Amazon before joining the USDS.
They said they could no longer honour commitments they had made to the
American people because DOGE was ?firing technical experts, mishandling
sensitive data, and breaking critical systems?.
?We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core
government systems, jeopardise Americans? sensitive data, or dismantle
critical public services,? the resigning workers wrote in a joint letter
on Tuesday.
?We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimise DOGE?s actions.?
The workers said they had been ?asked questions about political loyalty?
and had seen dozens of colleagues ?indiscriminately terminated by an
anonymous email? in the time since Trump?s inauguration for a second
non-consecutive term.
?Their removal endangers millions of Americans who rely on [government]
services every day,? they wrote.
?The sudden loss of their technology expertise makes critical systems
and Americans? data less safe.?
Around two-thirds of USDS staffers reportedly remained at the agency and
would take on new roles under DOGE.
Musk alleges ?fake news?, cites death threats
Musk wrote on his social media platform X that the workers? resignations
were ?fake news?.
However, he added ?they would have been fired had they not resigned? and
suggested they were Democrats ?who refused to return to the office?.
DOGE spokesperson Katie Miller wrote on X, ?These were full remote
workers who hung Trans flags from their workplaces."
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also dismissed the
resignations in a statement to the Associated Press.
?Anyone who thinks protests, lawsuits, and lawfare will deter President
Trump must have been sleeping under a rock for the past several years,?
she said.
Musk attended Trump?s first cabinet meeting under his new administration
on Wednesday, where he told cabinet members he had received death
threats over DOGE?s work.
DOGE?s official website was hacked earlier this month, only days after
it was launched.
Musk told the cabinet meeting that DOGE would make mistakes, and ?won?t
be perfect?.
?But when we make mistakes, we?ll fix it very quickly,? he said.
Elon Musk responded to some questions from journalists during Donald
Trump's cabinet meeting on Wednesday. Image: The White House / YouTube
Concerns over DOGE?s alleged use of AI
DOGE has faced criticism for reportedly using technologies such as
artificial intelligence to inform its decisions and the advice it
provides to the US government.
NBC News reported DOGE was expected to use an AI Large Language Model
(LLM) to assess responses from federal workers who were sent emails from
the group demanding they detail the work they completed in the past
week, or face being fired.
Musk told Wednesday?s cabinet meeting that Trump had told him to ?be
more aggressive? in his work at DOGE before those emails were sent out.
He said workers whose jobs were no longer needed, or were not being done
well, faced being sacked.
Wired also reported DOGE appeared to be editing a piece of software
called AutoRIF (Automated Reduction in Force), which had been designed
by the US Defense Department and ?could assist in mass firings of
federal workers?.
'Important ethical questions' raised
Dr Emmanuelle Walkowiak, a senior research fellow at RMIT University who
studies technology and the future of work, said DOGE?s actions had
raised ?important ethical questions? around the deployment of AI and
attacks on diversity and inclusion.
The use of AI to analyse personal data could potentially infringe on
individuals? privacy rights and could ?amplify existing biases and
reinforce discriminatory practices?, she told Information Age.
?When it comes to tech workers in the US, we need to keep in mind that
work is not just about producing, it?s not just about productivity.
?It?s also about responsibility ? the meaningfulness of your work, the
agency and the autonomy people have to complete their work and their
mission.
?What we observe right now ? is a kind of institutionalisation of
bullying practices.?
While DOGE had presented AI as a tool to increase productivity, it could
also be used to ?reduce the autonomy and agency of workers, and erode
trust in the workplace?, she said.
?The signal sent [by the resigning workers] is really clear ? what these
people are trying to do is to engage their responsibility in the design
of AI and AI deployment in the US.?
--
Roger Clarke mailto:[email protected]
T: +61 2 6288 6916 http://www.xamax.com.au http://www.rogerclarke.com
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
Visiting Professorial Fellow UNSW Law & Justice
Visiting Professor in Computer Science Australian National University
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2025 13:27:37 +0000
From: Stephen Loosley <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] Google Gemini?s AI coding tool is now free
Message-ID:
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Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252"
Please Note: This email did not come from ANU, Be careful of any request to buy
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important.
https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/types-of-scams/email-scams#toc-warning-signs-it-might-be-a-scam
Google Gemini?s AI coding tool is now free for individual users
And provides 90 times more monthly code completions than GitHub Copilot?s free
tier.
by Jess Weatherbed Feb 25, 2025
https://www.theverge.com/news/618839/google-gemini-ai-code-assist-free-individuals-availability
(22 Comments)
A free version of Gemini Code Assist, Google?s enterprise-focused AI coding
tool, is now available globally for solo developers.
Google announced today that Gemini Code Assist for individuals is launching in
public preview, aiming to make coding assistants ?with the latest AI
capabilities? more accessible for students, hobbyists, freelancers, and
startups.
?Now anyone can more conveniently learn, create code snippets, debug, and
modify their existing applications ? all without needing to toggle between
different windows for help or to copy and paste information from disconnected
sources,? said Ryan J. Salva, Google?s senior director of product management.
?While other popular free coding assistants have restrictive usage limits, with
usually only 2,000 code completions per month, we wanted to offer something
more generous.?
That feels particularly targeted at GitHub Copilot, the most direct competitor
to Gemini Code Assist, which also provides a free user tier that?s limited to
2,000 code completions and 50 Copilot Chat messages each month.
Google is offering up to 180,000 code completions per month by contrast, which
it describes as ?a ceiling so high that even today?s most dedicated
professional developers would be hard-pressed to exceed it.?
[Caption: A GIF demonstrating Google?s Gemini Code Assist tool. Here?s a quick
demo of Gemini Code Assist in action. GIF: Google]
Like the enterprise version, Gemini Code Assist for individuals is powered by
Google?s Gemini 2.0 artificial intelligence model and can generate entire code
blocks, complete code as you write, and provide general coding assistance via a
chatbot interface.
The free coding tool can be installed in Visual Studio Code, GitHub, and
JetBrains developer environments and supports all programming languages in the
public domain.
Developers can instruct Gemini Code Assist using natural language, such as
asking the coding chatbot to ?build me a simple HTML form with fields for name,
email, and message, and then add a ?submit? button.?
It currently supports 38 languages and up to 128,000 chat input tokens in the
token context window, which is the amount of text (tokens) that can be
processed or ?remembered? when generating a response.
The free Individual tier seems pretty expansive, but it doesn?t include all of
the advanced business-focused features available in the Standard and Enterprise
versions of Gemini Code Assist.
If you want productivity metrics, integrations with Google Cloud services like
BigQuery, or to customize responses using private code data sources then you?ll
need to use Google?s paid tiers.
Comments
subscriber
Having stopped coding for 20 years or so due to a career change, and just
picked it up again recently when I started coaching a First Tech Challenge
team, the AI coding helper is life changing. I keep imagining the huge amount
of time I would have saved back then when I was coding full time.
subscriber
As someone who still codes daily, and has been using Copilot since it became
free... it's okay. Saves me a bit of time here and there, but it frequently
gets things wrong. Often in subtle ways that can take a while to spot if you're
not being careful.
subscriber
(Edited)
It's really nice for simple things like getting the basics of a webpage fleshed
out or for getting something started. Full disclosure I haven't tried CoPilot
or this new Gemini but I have tried an older Gemini (around 1.0 release) and
ChatGPT many times and a few times in my experience they have hallucinated
NuGet packages that I couldn't find or maybe have been deprecated to solve more
complex issues.
subscriber
I would be curious to know how will Foogle use the data for the training.
Nothing is free. But still it?s a food offer particularly ror students and
startups. So, cool I guess !!
You can disable telemetry within the plugin settings or just not use it at all
if you're really worried about it.
You're the product of course.
subscriber
Interesting. Now tell me how do I access it? Google Search is not helping.
https://cloud.google.com/products/gemini/code-assist
subscriber
(Edited)
Just searched ?google code assistant? in Google Search and literally the first
result was the site and had everything needed to get started. lol
Should have read the article. Tells you how to install it.
Does it though? I only read: "The free coding tool can be installed in Visual
Studio Code, GitHub, and JetBrains developer environments and supports all
programming languages in the public domain."
Nothing about which plugin to install at all.
(Edited)
-- never mind --
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