Efforts to gut regulation across the US government using AI are well underway. On Wednesday, the Office of the Chief Information Officer at the Office of Management and Budget hosted a video call to discuss an AI tool being used to cut federal regulations, which the office called SweetREX Deregulation AI. The tool, which is still being developed, is built to identify sections of regulations that aren't required by statute, then expedite the process for adopting updated regulations. The development and rollout of what is being formally called the SweetREX Deregulation AI Plan Builder, or SweetREX DAIP, is meant to help achieve the goals laid out in President Donald Trump's "Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation" executive order, which aims to "promote prudent financial management and alleviate unnecessary regulatory burdens." Industrial-scale deregulation is a core aim laid out in Project 2025, the document that has served as a playbook for the second Trump administration.

A young man with no government experience who has yet to even complete his undergraduate degree is working for Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and has been tasked with using artificial intelligence to rewrite the agency's rules and regulations. Christopher Sweet was introduced to HUD employees as being originally from San Francisco and most recently a third-year at the University of Chicago, where he was studying economics and data science, in an email sent to staffers earlier this month. "I'd like to share with you that Chris Sweet has joined the HUD DOGE team with the title of special assistant, although a better title might be'Al computer programming quant analyst,'" Scott Langmack, a DOGE staffer and chief operating officer of an AI real estate company, wrote in an email widely shared within the agency and reviewed by WIRED. "With family roots from Brazil, Chris speaks Portuguese fluently. Please join me in welcoming Chris to HUD!" Sweet's primary role appears to be leading an effort to leverage artificial intelligence to review HUD's regulations, compare them to the laws on which they are based, and identify areas where rules can be relaxed or removed altogether.

Since declaring his support for Donald Trump in July of last year and subsequently spending more than 250m on his re-election effort, Elon Musk has rapidly accumulated political influence and positioned himself at the heart of the new administration. Now as prominent as the president himself, Musk has begun to make use of that power, making decisions that could affect the health of millions of people, gaining access to highly sensitive personal data, and attacking anyone who opposes him. Musk, the world's richest man and an unelected official, has achieved an astonishing level of power over the federal government. Over the weekend, workers with Musk's "department of government efficiency" (Doge) clashed with civil servants over demands for unfettered access to the computer systems of major US government agencies in a breakneck series of confrontations. When the dust settled, several top officials who opposed the takeover had been pushed out, and Musk's allies had gained control. Musk, with the backing of Trump, is now working to shut down the US Agency for International Development (USAid) – the world's largest single supplier of humanitarian aid.

Today in TechScape I'm deciphering Elon Musk's global political goals, a remarkable documentary filmed within World of Warcraft, polling on support for school phone bans, and cats on TikTok. Thank you for joining me. First, let's talk about Musk's global politics. Over the weekend, Musk pledged to give away 1m a day to registered voters in battleground states in the US who sign his Pac's petition in support of the first and second amendments. He awarded the first prize, a novelty check the size of a kitchen island, at a Pennsylvania rally on Saturday and the second on Sunday in Pittsburgh.

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM's home for opinion and news analysis. It first appeared on our publisher Joe Ragazzo's newsletter, Rhapsody. These online applications--which allow a person to converse with a "bot" powered by artificial intelligence via text--interface are a potential window into the future of technology. A few weeks ago, ChatGPT burst on the scene and spawned a million takes. It was promptly banned from some school districts.

The coronavirus pandemic has ushered in a new era of workplace surveillance that will extend well beyond our current crisis. Companies are increasingly monitoring employees who work from home, citing worries about security concerns or the need to boost employee productivity. In Amazon warehouses and UPS delivery trucks, surveillance technologies are being built into workplace infrastructure to monitor workers' every move. In many industries, employers can easily access phone calls, texts, browser histories, emails, and even GPS locations with very little effort. These exploitative surveillance practices are rooted in a historical mistrust of workers, especially low-wage workers, that can arguably be traced back to slavery and the exploitative "scientific management" practices that emerged from it, as bosses became obsessed with tracking workers' every move to maximize productivity and profit. Earlier forms of surveillance, like in the 19th century when companies hired Pinkerton private detectives to spy on workers, required a lot of labor. But modern technological advancements mean that the cost of surveillance today is very low.

Startups and venture capital are pouring into what might seem an unlikely place: India's vast, outdated agriculture industry. Seizing on controversial new deregulation, entrepreneurs are selling farmers apps to connect them to big buyers nationwide and using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the rickety supply chains that lose one-fourth of India's produce to wastage. Enormous amounts of India's grain, fruit and vegetables rot between farm and table because of manual handling, repeated loading and unloading, poor inventory management, lack of adequate storage and slow movement of goods. This rate of wastage from faulty supply chains is four to five times that of most large economies, experts say. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government introduced changes it calls a watershed that will "remove middlemen and let farmers sell their produce directly to buyers," improving their prospects, especially in far flung areas.

Remote medical consultation services that connect doctors and patients via smartphones and other devices are spreading across Japan, with their popularity boosted by recent deregulation of telemedicine. Under deregulation in April, health insurance can now be used for such consultations, and health care startups are expected to further accelerate the development of remote health care services that use artificial intelligence amid wider accumulation of health data on individuals. The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry unveiled its vision for developing and utilizing a health care database to support telemedicine applications for remote diagnosis, remote treatment and telesurgery in its proposal titled "The Japan Vision: Health Care 2035," along with changes in the social environment, including a rapidly aging population and the advancement of medical technology. As an experiment for remote consultations, this reporter tried using the health care mobile app called curon, which is operated by Tokyo-based health care startup Micin Inc. After explaining via smartphone that "I have been taking large amounts of painkillers because I have been bothered by frequent headaches and fevers recently," a doctor., who appeared in a videophone call replied, "You'll lessen the strain on your stomach and kidneys if you change your medication."

In January, Wall Street investors were optimistic tax cuts would sustain economic growth and the Trump bull market. As spring arrives, the world has proven decidedly more uncertain. The administration has not articulated end game goals for the trade standoff with China. President Xi Jinping is offering some concessions but his commitment to industrial policies that target vital American industries remains clear and menacing. An all-out trade war could disrupt global supply chains, nix planned investment spending, stall both economies and tank stocks.

KYOTO – Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed Sunday to push forward deregulation to bring about more technological innovations in Japan. Delivering a speech at an international conference on science and technology in Kyoto, Abe said he aims to make Japan a "cradle" for the so-called open innovations that go beyond organizational boundaries for the development of novel products and services. "The key is deregulation," Abe stressed. He pointed out that foreign companies have already been interested in Japan as a place to test self-driving technologies and develop new drugs. The use of robots is expected to help Japan's agriculture, where the farming population is aging and decreasing, Abe noted.