President Donald Trump launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot on Tuesday. The official announcement calls America.gov a “secure, intelligent, and service-oriented” chatbot designed to give accurate answers, and complete government transactions without having to navigate multiple federal agencies’ websites.
The chatbot can answer questions from federal student aid help to replacing a social security card.
But, USC students are hesitant in trusting the new government tool. Vianca Lopes Molina, a senior studying human biology, doesn’t see the benefit in another chatbot, especially when it comes from the government.
“Google is free. With the administration right now, I think they tend to hide a few things, or maybe make whatever they’re doing a little bit biased, so they might hide some information,” she said.
The chatbot does avoid questions that it finds political, responding with “I answer questions about government services and published official information. I don’t give political opinions, campaign or party information, or legal or financial advice.”
According to America.gov the White House has put over $5 billion dollars into the advancement of AI, a reflection of Trump’s commitment to make the United States be the dominant global leader in AI.
Trump signed the order hours before meetings with head AI executives, including leaders from Meta, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Palantir and Nvidia.
Leo Tornes, an integrative and evolutionary biology PHD student at USC, voiced his concerns about using AI in general. “I’m really against the use of AI, I think it really strips away the originality of humankind, so I personally wouldn’t use it,” he said.
But some students think there might be some good in the new chatbot.
“Navigating the federal government and services is difficult. So I would say that a ‘.gov,’ an official government website, helping with that would benefit the majority of Americans, as long as it’s not severely ideologically driven,” said Max Haidt, a junior studying political science.
The website is still relatively new but the Trump Administration has hopes that by 2027 it will roll out services such as passport renewal, medicare enrollment and a job application tool, among more resources.
Edited by Andriana Yatsyshyn and Lindsay Augustine.