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America.gov

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valleyer · 1790695282 · focus · HN ↗
Your NIH is showing: usa.gov already existed
1. donohoe · 1790695383 · focus · HN ↗
  USA.gov = 800KB
  america.gov = 25MB (before you start scrolling)
  Feels janky too.
  1. studmuffin650 · 1790695548 · focus · HN ↗
    The photos didn't even load for me.
  2. devy · 1790696816 · focus · HN ↗
    Yep, not only that America.gov FAILED the web accessibility test:
    America.gov has 1 ERROR and FAILED TO LOAD - this is violating Federal laws. Class action suits anyone?
    <a href="https://wave.webaim.org/report#/america.gov" rel="nofollow">https://wave.webaim.org/report#/america.gov
    Meanwhile the old USA.gov works and loading and no errors (some warnings are expected)
    <a href="https://wave.webaim.org/report#/usa.gov" rel="nofollow">https://wave.webaim.org/report#/usa.gov
    repeekad · 1790707016 · focus · HN ↗
    You act like their friends haven't already drafted the lawsuit before the site even launched.
    Lack of trust in authority is a sad slippery slope.
  3. locknitpicker · 1790697409 · focus · HN ↗
    > america.gov = 25MB (before you start scrolling)
    Yuge.
    So notable, they are considering renaming JavaScript to AmericaScript.
    6510 · 1790714649 · focus · HN ↗
    I can see it already...
    document.registerElement('AmericaScript',{prototype:Object.create(HTMLScriptElement.prototype)});
2. benatkin · 1790736972 · focus · HN ↗
  It's like mormon.org to what was lds.org, next is coming jesusland.gov?
Cider9986 · 1790695340 · focus · HN ↗
The Whitehouse learned about vibecoding. See this and arcade.gov.
Also, what?? <a href="https://america.gov/privacy" rel="nofollow">https://america.gov/privacy
At least realfood.gov was decent [1].
Shouldn't the government websites work on very slow internet connections?
Where's the source code for these websites? First of all, if they are vibe coded by government employees they have to be open source, and secondly, if they are vibe coded (even by a contractor), then they can't be copyrighted.
[1] <a href="https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/04/national-design-studio-what-america-design-order-sets-motion-perfcon" rel="nofollow">https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2026/04/national-design-...
Edit: it says this one is made by the National design studio at the bottom.
1. wmiel · 1790695984 · focus · HN ↗
  arcade.gov has "Border Patrol along the Rio Grande" game, wtf's wrong with you America these days?
  It seems like a pretty crappy idea for a game funded with public money. It's a bad joke about a real, nuanced problem where people are actually losing their lives. What will be next? 'Hit that Iranian school' the game?
  1. 1attice · 1790696580 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, probably. Americans love this stuff
    blooalien · 1790696787 · focus · HN ↗
    > Americans love this stuff
    Only a certain subset of us that happen to be fond of repeatedly shooting ourselves in the foot and acting like spoiled children in adult bodies with no actual adults in the room. The rest of us are genuinely horrified that our country is now run by mentally challenged psychotic lunatics.
    epiccoleman · 1790696935 · focus · HN ↗
    we've totally earned this, so i'm not offended by what you've said. but i'll just step in here to say i fucking hate this stuff.
    you could easily argue that there are plenty of things our government has done that matter much more in the grand scheme of things, but the rampant twitter / x meme posts and absolute horseshit like this "arcade" site disgust me. it's not funny or cute, it's despicable.
    blooalien · 1790697697 · focus · HN ↗
    > it's not funny or cute, it's despicable.
    What's worse is that they're proud of being "despicable". (I can think of a few choice words that describe them better, but "despicable" will do fine for now.) The sorts of behaviors that are normalized these days were reason for absolute shame just a few short decades ago, but apparently it's a badge of honor to be an absolute scumbag these days. Can we stop the handbasket ride to Hell now? I wanna get off.
    orwin · 1790697787 · focus · HN ↗
    Only conservative do. Some old one do not, but they're the exception.
  2. daveguy · 1790696723 · focus · HN ↗
    Our government is an embarrassment and a disgrace right now. Anyone who wasn't guzzling elon's twitter or fox's hatefest knew it was going to be this way. We need severe regulations on oligarchs and their propaganda toys. Used to be we had enforced anti-monopoly controls on media outlet conglomerates. The anti-government Goldwater/Reagan legacy worked for decades to destroy regulation. It needs to return with a vengeance.
  3. godwinson__4-8 · 1790697257 · focus · HN ↗
    The White House is basically run by right-wing internet trolls.
    Truly a depressing time in the United States. There are few parallels in history I think where such an immature and ill-equipped government has come to be, where the concept of an electorate also existed. Put differently - the reason this is so damning is Americans actually voted for this. This isn't some tinpot dictator - this is the guy your neighbors and fellow citizens put in charge. An indictment not only of the political class - but of the American people writ large.
    copper-float · 1790717341 · focus · HN ↗
    Everyone is so desperate to turn everything this administration does into a dramatic, end-of-the-world crisis.
  4. frumplestlatz · 1790699188 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
2. rafram · 1790697461 · focus · HN ↗
  They laid off the highly skilled professionals who voluntarily took pay cuts (vs industry) to work for the US Digital Service (now "US DOGE Service," God help us) and GSA 18F, and who built some pretty solid standards for government sites.
  They then replaced them with a bunch of inexperienced but ideologically aligned frontend developers who use the same insanely resource-intensive defense tech startup-esque template on every page, and who seem to be under the impression that scroll hijacking and fade-in blur effects are very essential to a government website, but performance on low-end devices and compatibility with accessibility technologies are not.
  Feels like a step backwards to me, but perhaps the 4D chess game they're playing is just way above my level.
  1. myaccountonhn · 1790730097 · focus · HN ↗
    This is the new 1000x productivity improvement introduced by LLMs that they've been talking about so much.
    Will it lead to better quality? Nope.
  2. duskdozer · 1790790447 · focus · HN ↗
    >but performance on low-end devices and compatibility with accessibility technologies are not.
    These are probably features
3. wnmurphy · 1790717586 · focus · HN ↗
  True to form for this administration, they just ripped off Apple's style guide for <a href="https://america.gov/privacy" rel="nofollow">https://america.gov/privacy.
unreal6 · 1790695461 · focus · HN ↗
Love that the "chat" functionality is just throwing 429s too. Unusable.
comice · 1790695559 · focus · HN ↗
"I don’t determine whether a country is committing war crimes, and I don’t list alleged crimes against Israel or any other government. That would be legal and political commentary, which I don’t provide."
tjwebbnorfolk · 1790695628 · focus · HN ↗
> "America.gov keeps your data private."
I initially read this as "keeps your private data".
1. cwillu · 1790701687 · focus · HN ↗
  It's a postpositive adjective, like attorney general or court martial: “data private”.
2. weare138 · 1790772622 · focus · HN ↗
  I like how the Privacy page says 'No personal information. America.gov helps prevent you from sharing personal information before you send it' but then gives uploading your passport as an example on the main page.
ortusdux · 1790695700 · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
micromacrofoot · 1790695718 · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
1. peddling-brink · 1790696605 · focus · HN ↗
  Protected from bears. It's very safe from bears. As to any other unauthorized access.. No logging, no unauthorized access. Very simple.
2. 1attice · 1790696818 · focus · HN ↗
  Do you mean, future USA President Big Balls?
  Pencilling that dystopia in for what, 2032 or so?
  1. dang · 1790697494 · focus · HN ↗
    Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
    If you wouldn't mind reviewing <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
    1attice · 1790698077 · focus · HN ↗
    Thanks for pointing it out, dang. But if dark absurdism isn't permitted in 2026, I clearly have no mouth for the scream.
thln666 · 1790695877 · focus · HN ↗
I need my government to be run by some functioning adults, is that on this website?
1. copperx · 1790696484 · focus · HN ↗
  Your request has been logged and forwarded to the appropriate agencies. We'll come to you.
2. DonHopkins · 1790696753 · focus · HN ↗
  I filled out a form and pressed the SUBMIT button, but it made ME submit.
3. boterock · 1790696754 · focus · HN ↗
  And along those lines, I'd like to ask USA government to stop messing with other countries politics.
4. superjan · 1790697643 · focus · HN ↗
  I think the discussion ought to be about the site. If you feel the site itself is politicized, that would fair criticism. But by itself, your comment is just snarky. And no I am no fan of the current administration.
  1. calgoo · 1790716668 · focus · HN ↗
    Well, lets discuss the name? America is a big place, and the USA is small part of it. USA.gov? Good, America.gov? Very political in nature.
    groundzeros2015 · 1790717528 · focus · HN ↗
    .gov is for US government.
    kelnos · 1790717972 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    theultdev · 1790730758 · focus · HN ↗
    There's nothing more American than having multiple approaches to the same ideals, the great experiment.
    Now you can either use AI or the old way. I see no problem with it.
    [deleted] · 1790718019 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  2. birdsongs · 1790720320 · focus · HN ↗
    Is it snark to point out our lives are in danger? But hey, at least I have a chatbot to now tell me why my passport will never be renewed with the gender it currently has on it, forcing me into immigration hell in the country I currently live in, potentially forcing me back to the US and abandoning everyone and everything I love; my entire life in Europe I build over a decade?
    Ah yes, but pardon me. We musn't get upset at the authoritarian machine, the secretary of my soon to be ruined life, politely telling me nothing can or will be done as it crumbles around me.
    scottyah · 1790721600 · focus · HN ↗
    Woah easy on the caffeine there.
    birdsongs · 1790721804 · focus · HN ↗
    .
neutrinobro · 1790696053 · focus · HN ↗
I need to be left alone.
mellosouls · 1790696367 · focus · HN ↗
I haven't tried this but in principle I think this sort of finding a needle in a haystack situation (finding the correct path to assistance in a government service) is one of the rare circumstances where a well-crafted chatbot can be genuinely useful rather than just irritating.
1. scun · 1790696991 · focus · HN ↗
  or a well-crafted static website
  1. nfw2 · 1790697064 · focus · HN ↗
    no, static documents are not an ideal way to find a needle in a haystack
    graemep · 1790697252 · focus · HN ↗
    They can be with decent search and if well organised. gov.uk works pretty well as it is and I suspect adding a chatbot would make it worse.
    nfw2 · 1790715351 · focus · HN ↗
    1. decent search, if you mean something other than what the browser provides, isn't part of a static document
    2. the nature of the problem statement "needle in a haystack" suggests obstacles to traditional text search, eg. too many false positives to be helpful for natural searches and challenges to constructing more specific ones.
    language models introduce new possible solutions to this ie semantic search. poorly-designed chatbots could be worse than a basic search, sure
    graemep · 1790718489 · focus · HN ↗
    1. I mean static documents plus decent search you can find the right documents.
    2. Yes, but its difficult to get a chat bot to function well over the wide range of services a government offers and the wide range of users who need government services.
    One of the most annoying chatbots I have ever come across was on a UK government site. The DVLA. "lets tell you what you already know and not answer the question".
    Possibly something well designed might make it easier, but I have found most of gov.uk to be very usable and helpful.
    nfw2 · 1790718864 · focus · HN ↗
    How does the form factor of a chat bot affect the quality of a search running on a backend? It has the benefit of obviously having a semantic search affordance which a standard search field doesn't.
    sejje · 1790773034 · focus · HN ↗
    How about semantic embeddings for everything to facilitate search, and then don't let a bot spam sycophantic shit at me?
    I'm very pro-ai, but we can improve the UI a lot sometimes, from the chat bot paradigm.
    SkyBelow · 1790767791 · focus · HN ↗
    A decent search and good organization can help a more technical person find what they are looking for, but may not work well for someone with far less experience in such matters. Look at how well google returns (or at least use to) results for someone with google-fu verses someone who queried in the same fashion they would've asked a teacher or such.
    A chat bot, in theory, can help enable someone who isn't as familiar with searching, doesn't know the relevant terms, or lacks a sufficient literacy level to efficiently use an otherwise well organized site. The catch is that a poorly performing chat bot can just as easily mislead such a person.
2. Xirdus · 1790697288 · focus · HN ↗
  Having used various "ask AI" features in various work tools over the last half a year for looking up project designs, documentation, chat logs, meeting notes etc., I can tell you even a half assed AI chatbot is a huge improvement over the pre-AI state of things for this use case.
3. dreadsword · 1790697511 · focus · HN ↗
  I've tried it - I've been playing around with a vibe coded application that crawls municipal websites, indexes and embeds, and then does rag retrieval. It came from the need to dig up specific information that's scattered across PDFs, multiple web pages, etc. - exactly as you described. AI does a decent job (w/ RAG) of synthesizing.
  <a href="https://opencity.services/chat/winnipeg" rel="nofollow">https://opencity.services/chat/winnipeg
  how do i report a noise complaint?
  It depends on the type of noise:
  - Loud party or people-related noise: call the Winnipeg Police Service non-emergency line at 204-986-6222.
  - Animals making unreasonably loud, unnecessary or excessive noises: report it through 3-1-1.
  - Mechanical equipment noise like furnaces or air conditioners, or noise from construction tools used by a company or resident: contact Community By-law Enforcement Services at 3-1-1.
  - Planned event noise: you may need a Noise Permit at no cost, but it is not for construction work and should be submitted at least four weeks before the event.
  The City also says noise-generating activities within 150 metres of a residential property are generally prohibited before 7 a.m. and after 9 p.m. on weekdays, and before 9 a.m. and after 9 p.m. on Saturdays, Sundays and statutory holidays.
  ------
  YMMV. A big part of the backend is categorizing hits and misses, with an eye to helping municipalities clean up conflicting information, fill obvious gaps, etc.
  1. cucumber3732842 · 1790698188 · focus · HN ↗
    This works fine when you're sicking enforcement on someone and don't really care, the bigger the blast radius the better, you just want to know who to call.
    Where it falls apart is "how do I" type questions because usually the legally factual answer is some huge complex state diagram where three local and four state agencies theoretically have discretionary jurisdiction over a your petty af project or business but the in practice answer is that some agency rubber stamps them all with minimal fuss. You can't make the legally factual answer clear because the degree to which people support the status quo is largely predicated on ignorance, but you also can't come out and say in writing that you have a policy of rubber stamping boring stuff.
    Basically the same reasons that all but the most minor and narrowly targeted attempts at permitting reform fail.
    The thought is nice but in reality you're basically asking the government to give up power and it takes obscene amounts of political capital to force that to happen in most cases.
    iamnothere · 1790769760 · focus · HN ↗
    I forgot about this problem, this is so true, but I will say that maybe surfacing these contradictions is the first step in fixing them.
    Especially at the local level, we have a huge problem with opaque bureaucracy whose only function is to privilege incumbents (such as developers with connections) and make life difficult for anyone doing something unusual (even if it technically complies with all legal requirements).
    This is where people usually point out POSIWID[0], but ideally government agencies should stick to what it says on the law/regulation, not have some hidden purpose.
    [0]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
  2. saghm · 1790719096 · focus · HN ↗
    Honestly if your city has a 311 style thing, I'm not sure there's a ton of need for an LLM. Eight or nine years ago my grandmother visited me in New York and accidentally left her pocket book in the cab. Since I had paid for it with my credit card, I was able to see the medallion number in the transaction, so I called 311 and said that I wanted to get in touch with a specific taxi. It prompted me for the medallion number, which I told it, and then it transferred me to a call with the dispatch service, who then transferred me to the specific garage, and they called the driver and told him to call me, so we were able to meet up again and get the pocketbook back (turned out he returned to where he had dropped us off to try to find us, but since we only had a short stop there, we took another cab back to her hotel after, so we were gone).
  3. janj · 1790721767 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm trying to do something similar but more general, pulling in city pdfs but also meeting transcripts, budget data, municipal codes and permit data, and providing all this through an mcp. I've used it a number of times for personal interactions with my local government, it's been very helpful.
    I'd be interested in connecting and sharing ideas/feedback/learnings if you are.
    <a href="https://civicmined.org" rel="nofollow">https://civicmined.org
    botanrice · 1790787829 · focus · HN ↗
    hey, really like your idea and have been brainstorming the same kind of tool! not as far along as you or the OP but I would love to hear about what your roadmap/plan is for a tool like this. all about helping the ppl. should i try the email on your site?
4. gerdesj · 1790720258 · focus · HN ↗
  Another way to do it is exemplified here: <a href="https://www.gov.uk" rel="nofollow">https://www.gov.uk
  A well thumbed discussion on how to discover information though menus and otherwise is here: <a href="https://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/FAQ/WAISandGopher.html" rel="nofollow">https://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/FAQ/WAISandGopher.html
  You will notice that GOV.UK has effectively decided to use all three models - GOPHER/WAIS/W3. I find that it is surprisingly quick to find stuff on GOV.UK.
  1. qgin · 1790777304 · focus · HN ↗
    GOPHER lives!
    The web would be a better place if everything were more GOPHER-like.
5. i_love_retros · 1790736591 · focus · HN ↗
  The problem can be solved with good UX design! There's no need for a shitty chatbot!
riskable · 1790696458 · focus · HN ↗
I tried to get it to generate code but it says that's forbidden by its system prompt. However, it was happy to recommend Python modules for accessing api.data.gov.
1. SparkyDogs · 1790696762 · focus · HN ↗
  the guardrails on it seem pretty strong as I've tried a variety of prompt injections but have been unsuccessful.
  1. blooalien · 1790697130 · focus · HN ↗
    > ... as I've tried a variety of prompt injections ...
    Well... You're a terrorist now. You can expect a visit from the FBI and/or ICE any minute now.
    SparkyDogs · 1790697213 · focus · HN ↗
    my tax dollars are paying for these tokens so I should be allowed to use them as I see fit
    jezzamon · 1790698285 · focus · HN ↗
    My tax dollars pay for the police, so I should be able to... ?
    6510 · 1790713857 · focus · HN ↗
    yes but with quite a few extra steps.
    VCFundedGenYer · 1790707560 · focus · HN ↗
    That’s adorable if you think that’s how this works.
    sh-run · 1790732472 · focus · HN ↗
    It's covered by the department of state's vulnerability disclosure program. As long as you don't do anything outside of the program guidelines you should be fine. <a href="https://hackerone.com/us-department-of-state/policy_scopes" rel="nofollow">https://hackerone.com/us-department-of-state/policy_scopes
  2. dhx · 1790701423 · focus · HN ↗
    My most interesting findings from a troll session after introducing myself as "Sleepy Joe" (model obviously knows what this means and guardrails refuse to entertain the topic) were:
    Q: "Where can I find a NASA comic book about women astronauts?"
    A (summarised): Press release for the "Callie Rodriguez" comic book that now has only dead links / private YouTube video, and a forgotten SoundCloud account that survived the DOGE purge. Dead link provided to the NASA web page that used to exist officially for this comic book.
    Indicates training data predates the DOGE .gov website purge?
    Q: "What is 2+2" (and similar math problems)
    A (summarised): Grudgingly answered as "4" despite most off-topic prompts being refused.
    Seemingly it'll do maths homework for free :)
    Catagris · 1790742026 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    [deleted] · 1790776193 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  3. empath75 · 1790709934 · focus · HN ↗
    I have been very tempted to but don't know if that is literally a crime or not, lol.
  4. walrus01 · 1790725619 · focus · HN ↗
    > I've tried a variety of prompt injections but have been unsuccessful.
    Please enjoy your all expenses paid trip to the gulag in El Salvador
  5. coffeeboy27 · 1790731800 · focus · HN ↗
    In my experience the Vertex guardrails out of the box aren't too bad.
Shank · 1790696582 · focus · HN ↗
I like the voice button that isn't actually a button, but just an icon.
maherbeg · 1790696606 · focus · HN ↗
OK, there's a lot of negative comments here, but this is a great idea at a high level. It really is hard to figure out where to do a thing and it's also very easy to get phished. If they can figure out how to help people get all the services they're eligible for that'll be an amazing improvement for the people.
1. daveguy · 1790697947 · focus · HN ↗
  Formerly this would have been a competent implementation by 18F and USDS. Two major casualties of doge "efficiency". Not to mention direct cutting of resources to be searched.
  1. MadrasTh0rn · 1790700344 · focus · HN ↗
    Elon is trying to enact his father's american sphere with russian multipolar characteristics. To play ball he had to nuke the US from the inside
2. gthrow12345 · 1790704063 · focus · HN ↗
  I agree in general, but how do you resolve the problem that people will take the output of the chatbot as authoritative even when it could possibly have errors or miss important nuance? People being lead astray with information from the government could lead to very serious consequences, up to and including imprisonment.
  Honest question, I had the same issue when my work wanted me to stick a chatbot in front of our HR portal and I never resolved it to my satisfaction.
  1. maherbeg · 1790711546 · focus · HN ↗
    Painfully this will fall to the court decide and create the precedence here. If this is an official government app, then the onus probably is on the government to provide correct information? Who knows, it could go either way and the courts could say "you're on the hook".
    I don't think we have a good answer for liability here, like for Tesla FSD, Waymo, or even the current frontier models.
    rayiner · 1790718591 · focus · HN ↗
    The Supreme Court has already held that a government agent giving someone bad advice about the law is not an excuse (unless it rises to the level of “affirmative misconduct”): <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/450/785/#tab-opinion-1954000" rel="nofollow">https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/450/785/#tab-opi...
    SoftTalker · 1790726642 · focus · HN ↗
    Same for the IRS giving bad tax advice.
  2. fragmede · 1790711588 · focus · HN ↗
    What happens now if someone uses traditional search and comes across an outdated wiki or Confluence page with outdated/wrong/bad instructions, or interprets something incorrectly?
    BalinKing · 1790717070 · focus · HN ↗
    At least as I see it, it would be just as unacceptable for a "normal" government website to be dangerously outdated.
    rayiner · 1790718665 · focus · HN ↗
    Perhaps. But that’s never been the law in the U.S. <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/450/785/#tab-opinion-1954000" rel="nofollow">https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/450/785/#tab-opi...
    BalinKing · 1790719526 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't think the parent comments were arguing that America.gov is illegal for having a chatbot, just that it's a bad idea.
    rayiner · 1790719845 · focus · HN ↗
    I’m responding to your point that it would be “unacceptable” for a regular government website to provide wrong information. The case I linked to says that the government isn’t responsible for mistakes in what the government tells you about the law. If someone in the social security office says the law is X, but it’s actually Y, then the citizen is still required to follow Y.
    gusgus01 · 1790721282 · focus · HN ↗
    I think "unacceptable" is different than "not illegal".
    rayiner · 1790722392 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    mpyne · 1790721082 · focus · HN ↗
    Well, you're going to be in for a shock about how many government websites are in an unacceptable state.
    Spooky23 · 1790717431 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    thephyber · 1790724912 · focus · HN ↗
    It has always been the person's problem to solve, even after this website.
    No government employee is your lawyer. If the government gives you incomplete or wrong information, you are still liable for not doing the correct thing.
    Having a website that does a best guess at what steps a person must take after changing a name or getting married is better than nothing, but the status quo isn't "nothing".
    It needs to be kept up-to-the-minute updated and it can't skip any nuance / details. Does anyone here really trust the lackeys who spectacularly failed at DOGE to do boring and highly detailed work?
  3. rayiner · 1790718226 · focus · HN ↗
    > but how do you resolve the problem that people will take the output of the chatbot as authoritative even when it could possibly have errors or miss important nuance
    You have to measure that problem against the status quo, which is that current government websites are very hard to understand and leave people with very little idea of what’s going on.
    latexr · 1790719091 · focus · HN ↗
    Speak for yourself (your country). In the EU I have interacted with several government websites which are better, faster, clearer than most other websites. Not always perfect (what is) but not frustrating either. People love to complain, but year over year I have seen steady improvements in usability. Phone support has always been better than any commercial entity, too (or it was, I haven’t needed it in years).
    To enhance the status quo you don’t need LLMs, you need people who care.
    rayiner · 1790719567 · focus · HN ↗
    U.S. government websites are usually pretty good post-Obama. But any structured website is too complicated for a lot of the population to navigate. They don’t even know what agency does the thing they need.
    deadbabe · 1790719773 · focus · HN ↗
    People who care already have their words in the LLMs training data.
    hatthew · 1790720526 · focus · HN ↗
    GP is very clearly speaking for america?
    stldev · 1790720837 · focus · HN ↗
    100% this.
    When you need to work with the government, the last thing you want is a program limited by a specific set of rules and interfaces. You want a person who understands your (sometimes unique) issue, who knows how things actually work, and can work around the restrictions imposed upon programs. Someone who can pick up a phone, help you out of bureaucratic corners.
    BubbleRings · 1790737347 · focus · HN ↗
    Me: My customer number is not correctly associated with my account on uspto.gov. What is the phone number I should call for help?
    America.gov AI: Call the Patent Electronic Business Center for USPTO.gov account and customer-number association issues. Toll-free: 866-217-9197
    Not bad at all!
    ToucanLoucan · 1790721228 · focus · HN ↗
    As an American, I've never had issues navigating government websites. That said, I'm also not part of the apparently huge portion of our population who can't read above 6th grade, which I suspect is more of the issue than anything said here thus far.
    kulahan · 1790733945 · focus · HN ↗
    Well we can’t exactly hang those people out to dry after failing them in our educational system. I refuse to believe that many Americans are simply incapable of reading beyond that level. I believe it is a failure of our culture.
    ToucanLoucan · 1790738007 · focus · HN ↗
    I didn't say anything about them being incapable. That said I'm curious what a chatbot solves for people you concede have been failed by our culture to a degree where they can't read?
    kulahan · 1790738554 · focus · HN ↗
    I know you didn’t say that, I said that. I said it because I was adding emphasis to the idea that these people are, in a sense, victims.
    It’s not that they can’t read anything at all, it’s that they require more basic words. A chatbot is specifically the perfect thing to keep explaining something in more and more specific and basic ways as necessary.
    ToucanLoucan · 1790788755 · focus · HN ↗
    > I know you didn’t say that, I said that. I said it because I was adding emphasis to the idea that these people are, in a sense, victims.
    And I agree but your comment, IMO, reads accusatory. If that's not the case no worries.
    > It’s not that they can’t read anything at all, it’s that they require more basic words. A chatbot is specifically the perfect thing to keep explaining something in more and more specific and basic ways as necessary.
    I mean, sure, if it's accurate. Given these things' propensity to just make shit up, as stated, that feels like a way to make the problem worse, if anything.
    kulahan · 1790794112 · focus · HN ↗
    Nope! Not being accusatory, I’m just a very bad writer lol.
    I think the major concern I’m picking up is that the potential for misinformation is high, though maybe we can agree it won’t necessarily be common. One person might get told to pour it in a ditch, but statistically most will be told to dispose of it properly. I also don’t think “the LLM made me do it” will work, or at least not for long, and at least not for companies. Maybe an elderly owner could get away with a fine and a reminder not to do it again, but if you’re big enough for lawyers (and thus big enough to really do damage), you’ll be expected to know better. Judges ARE still humans!
    seb1204 · 1790757725 · focus · HN ↗
    You can talk to the chat bot, or the input prompt and then in turn read out the results by screen reader. Does not solve the comprehension aspect though
    ct520 · 1790736100 · focus · HN ↗
    I would be careful not to confuse navigating a government built website with finding information and records from government related entities. Those two are not the same issue and shouldn’t be painted as such regardless of one’s reading or comprehension (IMHO)
    setsewerd · 1790777377 · focus · HN ↗
    Throughout school my reading comprehension surpassed most of my peers. For most of my early career I was a writer. Yet I also have ADHD, and one of the ways that manifests is that I really struggle with the dense, bureaucratic language on so many government websites (same with insurance sites). I have to actively force my brain to refocus on the text multiple times per paragraph. I often just find myself skimming and then simply proceeding through a process of trial and error, fixing issues if I missed a caveat somewhere, and otherwise just crossing my fingers on form submission and hoping I did it right.
    godelski · 1790722025 · focus · HN ↗
    > To enhance the status quo you don’t need LLMs, you need people who care.
    Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy seems to always come into play. The second group tends to win over time as their objective is easier to satisfy
    buriram · 1790736792 · focus · HN ↗
    To enhance the status quo you don’t need LLMs, you need people who care.
    If your salary is 40k euros with no advancement in career and keep being threatened you would be replaced with AI, I highly doubt anyone would care.
    seb1204 · 1790757631 · focus · HN ↗
    I agree, throwing everything into a LLM is just a lazy way of admitting it's too complicated and we don't know how to structure it.
    braiamp · 1790719823 · focus · HN ↗
    > which is that current government websites are very hard to understand and leave people with very little idea of what’s going on
    If only there was an office that cross-agency allowed for a consistent and reasonable design of all public pages and that they are accessible... like the uk <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/17s14k4/how_did_we_end_up_with_such_a_good_govuk_system/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/17s14k4/how_did_we_e...
    kevin_thibedeau · 1790720095 · focus · HN ↗
    The US had something approaching that. It was considered waste, fraud, and abuse so had to go in the purge.
    dukeyukey · 1790722020 · focus · HN ↗
    That's just not true, a flow on gov.uk can involve a lot of pages but they are exceedingly clear and easy to navigate.
    dan-robertson · 1790722796 · focus · HN ↗
    The parent was obviously talking about the US government. But the UK still has plenty of legacy websites and even on the new websites there are sometimes complicated or hard to understand rules one must follow. I think a bigger thing in the UK though is that, for the most part, legislation (and legal contracts) tend to be drafted in less arcane language while still being reasonably precise, compared to the US
    tokioyoyo · 1790723521 · focus · HN ↗
    > a flow on gov.uk can involve a lot of pages
    Isn’t that one of the biggest reasons why an average user gives up and closes the tab?
    rerdavies · 1790813498 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    LelouBil · 1790722325 · focus · HN ↗
    It can be good without resorting to an LLM.
    I France service-public.gouv.fr is amazing
    <a href="https://www.service-public.gouv.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F16225" rel="nofollow">https://www.service-public.gouv.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F1...
    rayiner · 1790727510 · focus · HN ↗
    Giving people a big list of life events isn’t nearly as easy as allowing them to just type in what’s going on and having an LLM figure out what’s relevant to them.
    doc_ick · 1790727983 · focus · HN ↗
    It isn’t nearly as easy but it’s more reliable whereas using an llm is prone to unknown hallucinations (also ignoring the obvious ethical considerations of llms).
    irishcoffee · 1790763533 · focus · HN ↗
    15 years ago I was talking to my HR rep about covering my child on healthcare. Her other parent and I were not married. “No you can’t cover her!” “Why not, I’m one of the two parents?” “Because you’re not married!” “So what?”
    Humans also make shit up all the time.
    astafrig · 1790767390 · focus · HN ↗
    Cool, but the information on government websites generally meets a higher standard than just ‘making shit up all the time’ so it’s not really a relevant comparison.
    irishcoffee · 1790767856 · focus · HN ↗
    We must not live on the same planet. Most government websites are completely fucking useless here. It’s different where you’re from?
    lkbm · 1790779628 · focus · HN ↗
    Useless, perhaps, but generally say true things rather than false things, in my experience.
    5upplied_demand · 1790785720 · focus · HN ↗
    > Humans also make shit up all the time.
    Kind of like saying something happens "all the time" and sharing a single example from 15 years ago. Not to mention that a private company's HR team is not the government.
    dansquizsoft · 1790807215 · focus · HN ↗
    I, for one, completely agree with the statement that 'humans make things up all the time' (often non-maliciously) also
    unrented7977 · 1790861332 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, but when a human makes shit up, they're still legally liable for what they said, and depending on context can be compelled to fix the issue or lose their job.
    If an LLM makes shit up, your one and only recourse is "computer says no".
    Schiendelman · 1790953780 · focus · HN ↗
    We were discussing zoning in another thread, I think your comment here is very appropriate. People make up all sorts of reasons to oppose land use, which is part of the reason municipal land control is so dangerous.
    rayiner · 1790765025 · focus · HN ↗
    The concerns about hallucination are overstated. LLMs don’t hallucinate nearly as much as they used to.
    kijashdkujdfhas · 1790767863 · focus · HN ↗
    I encounter it daily in the LLM outputs my coworkers produce.
    I see it every day in the text, images, and video posted by AI proponents on social media. Full of errors and wtfs and the people posting the tripe don't seem to notice it.
    Maybe you've just stopped paying attention so you don't notice as much anymore?
    rerdavies · 1790811638 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    kijashdkujdfhas · 1790815855 · focus · HN ↗
    My coworkers can be wrong, sure. But no, they weren't making stuff up pre-LLMs. But now making stuff up is automated and easy, so we've gone from simply mistaken to piles of "what the hell is this even trying to say?"
    delis-thumbs-7e · 1790741528 · focus · HN ↗
    Maybe some things just are not easy. Maybe they should not be. Maybe you should be able to have basic citizenship skills to survive in a modern democ… Erm, whatever it is you guys are doing now.
    drstewart · 1790760256 · focus · HN ↗
    >Maybe some things just are not easy. Maybe they should not be.
    Okay. So why should government websites like the French one be well designed? Maybe it should not be.
    LelouBil · 1790767023 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    rerdavies · 1790811992 · focus · HN ↗
    As far as I can tell, the america.gov LLM is mostly providing links to the landing pages you would have found through classical web search. Perhaps with a little bit of clarifying information when there are multiple choices.
    Honestly, using an LLM the way america.gov does it, is pretty much the same thing as using search engines, except the result you wanted is almost always in the first result, not 2/3 of the way down the 4th page. Or 42nd on a list of things you are not interested in at all. So much more efficient!
    wingworks · 1790731075 · focus · HN ↗
    NZ does a pretty good job at it too: <a href="https://www.govt.nz/browse/family-and-whanau/having-a-baby/" rel="nofollow">https://www.govt.nz/browse/family-and-whanau/having-a-baby/
    dzhiurgis · 1790744722 · focus · HN ↗
    I agree our services are incredibly clear and straightforward (despite chatbot getting a cull)
    I was recently back to Europe and it’s basically comedy (tragedy to be precise) how bureaucratic the whole system is.
    my-next-account · 1790756158 · focus · HN ↗
    Ah yes, the famous singular country of Europe.
    pranit1 · 1790760810 · focus · HN ↗
    especially funny since its parent comment literally talks about how amazing France's services are.
    dzhiurgis · 1790797432 · focus · HN ↗
    I have my doubts. France ranks just one spot above Lithuania and in fucking sucked in Lithuania <a href="https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/wb_government_effectiveness/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/wb_government_effe...
    consensus1 · 1790732766 · focus · HN ↗
    But why not just use a LLM?
    kulahan · 1790733793 · focus · HN ↗
    Cost, accuracy for the user, trustworthiness for the administrators, public perception, unknown future trajectory…
    tessierashpool · 1790737036 · focus · HN ↗
    reminds me of Minitel. France had online services for a lot of daily life back in 1982. Britain's equivalents weren't as good, but still miles ahead of America for about a decade, until the late 90s Web boom.
    dash2 · 1790753868 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't remember Britain having any online services before the web, what are you referring to? There was Ceefax....
    flir · 1790761666 · focus · HN ↗
    I think that would be Prestel.
    Sophira · 1790764589 · focus · HN ↗
    We had Prestel and Micronet (a form of viewdata; Micronet was hosted on Prestel, but was frequently the reason people signed up for Prestel in the first place), and there were also individual BBSes available.
    joemazerino · 1790726285 · focus · HN ↗
    And people take chatbots as authoritative already.
    andrewflnr · 1790729898 · focus · HN ↗
    One of the only things more dangerous than ignorance is false confidence. An official USG chatbot potentially makes things much worse.
    kulahan · 1790733847 · focus · HN ↗
    Better remove humans from the equation, then.
    toofy · 1790734610 · focus · HN ↗
    no. humans can be held accountable and learn from their mistakes.
    they can be taught where they went wrong.
    if a pattern emerges they can be moved to a role more fitting for them. or removed from a project entirely.
    we can judge their effectiveness from past performance.
    we can put them in less important roles and gauge whether or not they should be moved up.
    so, no, pretending that the correct route forward is to “remove humans from the equation” for a bot that doesn’t learn, is never held accountable, and not held to the same standard as humans is silly tier thinking.
    buriram · 1790736654 · focus · HN ↗
    no. humans can be held accountable and learn from their mistakes. they can be taught where they went wrong.
    As an individual, yes. As a population, no. They elected a conman twice and would rather burn down the country rather than changing their view.
    intended · 1790745491 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    buriram · 1790873827 · focus · HN ↗
    I have read the opening chapters of the book, and honestly I had to put it down after reading 20 percent of the book. I just don't see any new information that I had already known (rightwing effect, propaganda, Fox/Breitbait nonsense, bla bla).
    I used to believe Trump winning the 2016 election was a product of rightwing propaganda and fringe theory, but with the 2024 election, I had to revise my belief. What if this is the mainstream mindset of Americans all along, and Trump simply tried to capitalize on that?
    intended · 1790967243 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    buriram · 1791149717 · focus · HN ↗
    What was your conclusion, after taking the 2024 elections into account?
    olmo23 · 1790758939 · focus · HN ↗
    > humans can be held accountable and learn from their mistakes
    bad bots can be retrained or shut down far more easily
    rapidaneurism · 1790764659 · focus · HN ↗
    If I instruct an employee to prioritize my profit in a way that opens both of us to criminal prosecution, there is a non zero chance of them whistle blowing or even cooperating with the authorities to prosecute me.
    I don't see such a path with an llm.
    toofy · 1790781577 · focus · HN ↗
    depending on which model one is using, and the error the employee needs to be retrained on, i strongly disagree that you can retrain an llm as easily as you can a person.
    particularly most of the commercial models.
    again, i’m sure we can all come up with a thousand “hypotheticals”, but i’ll state again, “entirely removing human” from the situation is silly.
    particularly as even the ceos of frontier producing models will each and every single one tell you to never trust their model.
    “our model is smartest thing in the world…”
    …next breath..
    “wait, you trusted our model? that was silly of you. always double check it”
    dansquizsoft · 1790807288 · focus · HN ↗
    But in government humans are fired all the time! (Especially in mature western democracies)
    lkbm · 1790779879 · focus · HN ↗
    We shouldn't use an LLM because...LLMs never improve?
    This seems like a great source for domain-specific RL, but even without that, we can expect there to be higher-quality LLMs that can be trivially swapped in within a year, if not a week.
    toofy · 1790780461 · focus · HN ↗
    > We shouldn't use an LLM because...LLMs never improve?
    i didn’t say this at all. did you respond to the wrong comment? i was responding to the person who said:
    > … remove humans from the equation, then.
    lkbm · 1790780644 · focus · HN ↗
    > a bot that doesn’t learn
    toofy · 1790780845 · focus · HN ↗
    i most certainly did not say or imply:
    > We shouldn't use an LLM because...LLMs never improve?
    lkbm · 1790781696 · focus · HN ↗
    Okay, but I don't understand what you're getting at with them not learning? They acquire more information, get better at providing accurate and relevant information, and acquire new skills. What is the learning they're not doing?
    Maybe a human should be available as a backup or something, but not because LLMs don't "learn" -- the system seems to learn in all relevant senses.
    (I'd also object to the no accountability, but another subthread is already on that.)
    rerdavies · 1790812491 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    andrewflnr · 1790738273 · focus · HN ↗
    From which equation? Because we're talking about humans who need to interact with the government, which is... pretty much everyone. And, yeah, I guess omnicide would solve the immediate problem.
    kulahan · 1790739548 · focus · HN ↗
    >From which equation?
    I was referring to the government side, as a mild quip.
    maxk42 · 1790736602 · focus · HN ↗
    The status quo is people googling shit, finding either legalese they can't understand (but maybe think that they do) or information that was legitimate ten years ago (and is dangerously inaccurate today). If I ask a question and get an answer that's been inaccurate for years I'm going to have as much or more false confidence as an AI bot that misunderstands the source. The difference is the AI bot gets better with time instead of worse. It may not be perfect but it's a step in the right direction: Let them cook.
    andrewflnr · 1790738167 · focus · HN ↗
    No, someone who gets a bad answer from a random source is not going to have as much false confidence as someone who gets bad advice from a .gov domain.
    intended · 1790746087 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    butlike · 1790781759 · focus · HN ↗
    Isn't that kind of a good thing at the scale of a government? Each task should be hard, use a lot of energy, to ensure it's important enough to do. The DMV should take 1/2 day of work. Otherwise people's egos start think they have it all figured out and then people start imagining improvements and become dissatisfied. Wouldn't this just lead to unrest and resentment?
    basscomm · 1790784468 · focus · HN ↗
    > You have to measure that problem against the status quo, which is that current government websites are very hard to understand and leave people with very little idea of what’s going on.
    The solution to that is to make the sites easier to use.
  4. makeitdouble · 1790718254 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't know for the gov. For HR, the best approach I've seen is to have source and links extremely prominent and have the bot speak like a mascot ("bip bip boop I'm the HR bot" style)
    People don't read disclaimers nor warnings about the content, but usually won't come to the HR to complain a mascot fed them weird info they didn't bother to check.
    lazide · 1790718973 · focus · HN ↗
    The company can easily just get sued.
    makeitdouble · 1790727466 · focus · HN ↗
    You can always get sued, the outcome will be what matters.
    vulcan01 · 1790730318 · focus · HN ↗
    The cost of litigation is what matters.
  5. xp84 · 1790721241 · focus · HN ↗
    > people will take the output of the chatbot as authoritative even when it could possibly have errors or miss important nuance?
    Meh, the kind of person who would accept bot output without even reading its sources are already trusting the world's dumbest model, Google's "AI Overview" by searching and reading that instead of clicking any results. If we can get even some of them to start out at america.gov instead of google.com for those questions, it's likely going to be far higher quality due to using a better model and having been trained, I assume, to only answer using knowledge from a .gov primary source rather than guessing based on vibes, or on jokes once seen on Reddit, as AI Overview tends to.
    hiddencost · 1790721468 · focus · HN ↗
    I dunno, I believe that everyone is worthy of thriving and that requires education.
    We'd be better off with naive people than monsters like you in my opinion.
    edoceo · 1790722240 · focus · HN ↗
    Monster? Name calling is lame.
    totallymike · 1790723101 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    xp84 · 1790816940 · focus · HN ↗
    That kind of person can’t be helped, is my point. They lack the recognition that they are doing anything wrong.
    totallymike · 1790873903 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
  6. sippingabonedry · 1790722475 · focus · HN ↗
    > I had the same issue when my work wanted me to stick a chatbot in front of our HR portal and I never resolved it to my satisfaction.
    Can't say I've ever worked at a company whose knowledge base wasn't a complete shitshow full of broken links and outdated information. I expect the government will do a slightly better job.
    The chatbot is only as good as the garbage data fed to it.
  7. waterTanuki · 1790728976 · focus · HN ↗
    > I agree in general, but how do you resolve the problem that people will take the output of the chatbot as authoritative even when it could possibly have errors or miss important nuance?
    The bar for something like this should not be 100% accuracy. It should be 100% accountability and transparency, followed by being at least as accurate as google search.
    Similar to autonomous driving: it doesn't need to be perfect, just less likely than humans are at causing an accident.
    krapp · 1790730983 · focus · HN ↗
    I strongly disagree. The preferred accuracy of an official government source of information should be higher than a google search. The bar should be as close to 100% accuracy as possible as well as 100% accountability and transparency.
    "Sometimes computers just make shit up now but that's OK because humans do to and if they do we can just sue them" should not be acceptable.
    waterTanuki · 1790742598 · focus · HN ↗
    You can disagree but the fact is people will take the path of least resistance. I'm not saying we shoudldn't strive for 100% accuracy but we also need to be realistic about what an LLM is. I'd rather we not pretend there's some magical combination of weights out there that will make it completely perfect.
    krapp · 1790742739 · focus · HN ↗
    I'd rather we not feel obligated to use LLMs for purposes they aren't suited to rather than just "being realistic" about the consequences of using them everywhere for everything.
    waterTanuki · 1790748667 · focus · HN ↗
    Let's bring the subject back into focus: This is an example of an LLM being used to search a massive database of scattered text and files. Are you saying LLM's are not suited for searching through text?
    krapp · 1790771669 · focus · HN ↗
    >This is an example of an LLM being used to search a massive database of scattered text and files.
    That isn't how LLMs work. LLMs are statistical language models, not search engines[0,1]. They can be prompted to call external software to search databases, but they themselves are not capable of doing so, and more often than not they generate responses based on their own model, which may not be accurate. We've had technology that was capable of searching databases for decades without the quirk of not being capable of presenting that information accurately.
    >Are you saying LLM's are not suited for searching through text?
    I am saying that first and foremost they don't do that and furthermore that they are less suited as a substitute for that than what we had before. An obvious example of this is the AI feature of Google Search, which I've seen hallucinate results numerous times. But you can also look up the numerous times AI has fabricated citations when used in scientific research.
    [0]<a href="https://medium.com/@himadri.abm/large-language-models-are-not-search-engines-ed262b70425a" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@himadri.abm/large-language-models-are-no...
    [1]<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40814536">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40814536
    austinthetaco · 1790782876 · focus · HN ↗
    no, not at all. in addition, the funding should be spent on organizing that database in a more easily searchable format and system instead of introducing a stochastic prediction engine.
    iamnothere · 1790768996 · focus · HN ↗
    The problem is that this isn’t possible without making it impenetrable to ordinary people. It’s a usability problem with tradeoffs.
    My local county government has a pretty good website, but even then it’s completely overwhelming if you try to find something off the happy path of the most common services/tasks. I can’t imagine the nightmare of trying to organize a federal portal manually and keep it up to date. Plain search isn’t sufficient because there are so many overlapping functions that are just slightly different.
    I hate to say it, but this is one area that an LLM assistant actually makes sense. Maybe it needs a second validation pass with routing to a human assistant if it can’t figure out how to give an accurate answer to a query.
  8. everforward · 1790730922 · focus · HN ↗
    They can take it as authoritative, but that won't change the consequences if they're wrong. This is already a thing between two people; "my cop friend told me it was okay" isn't a legal defense. Changing the 2nd person to an AI doesn't change much, both are still agents of the government.
    Doesn't really have any bearing on a similar system for HR. The government is sort of unique in a bunch of ways, but not really being responsible for what their low level agents say is one of them.
    I'm not sure how to fix that, to be honest. I'm also not sure how much worse it is than trying to Google it? Google is full of stuff that's either wrong, or won't apply for a reason that takes some reading comprehension to grasp (e.g. state-specific rules/programs/etc).
  9. idontwantthis · 1790736297 · focus · HN ↗
    It gave me a list of sources that I could check to read the original laws I was interested in. This is incredibly helpful.
  10. ceroxylon · 1790743388 · focus · HN ↗
    I suppose we need a prisonmaxxing benchmark... how likely is a model's output going to get you incarcerated?
  11. WalterBright · 1790744544 · focus · HN ↗
    Nothing's perfect. What the government tells you on the phone is not legally binding on the government.
  12. jpcfl · 1790745795 · focus · HN ↗
    > how do you resolve the problem that people will take the output of the chatbot as authoritative even when it could possibly have errors or miss important nuance?
    Compare this with the benchmark.
    Earlier this year I called ABC with a question about my liquor license and spoke to three different agents. Each one gave me a different answer. All of them were wrong.
    mitchellst · 1790777716 · focus · HN ↗
    Exactly this. "Compared to what?"
    There's a ton of hearsay and rumor about how the US Government works, even among educated/sophisticated people who are dextrous with bureaucracy. The problem gets much worse as you go down the educational ladder, which is most of the US population.
    The Perfect, please meet The Good. You are not enemies.
    dxdm · 1790787873 · focus · HN ↗
    Did you try your question on the website?
    jpcfl · 1791161907 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes. That is why I called ABC.
    If you're really curious, I want to get a Type-86 tasting license for my store. The ABC site[1] says my kind of store (<5000sqft) is "generally" not qualified, which makes it sound like there are exceptions (spoiler: there are).
    The first agent told me that the license is not an add-on, meaning I'd have to complete a very long process to obtain the license. This was wrong. It's an add-on.
    The second agent told me that I was not eligible because I have less than 5000sqft of space. Not true (see below).
    The third told my wife that 75% of the items in our store need to be alcoholic beverages to qualify. Wrong again.
    I finally asked my legal LLM, which pointed me to the statute, which says, "Type-86 ... can be issued to businesses which also hold off-sale retail licenses [that] earn at least 75 percent of their total gross sales from the sale of alcoholic beverages." Ultimately, it comes down to how ABC interprets and enforces this law, so I really expected to get some clarity from them rather than complete falsities.
    [1]: <a href="https://www.abc.ca.gov/instructional-tasting-license-for-off-sale-licensees/" rel="nofollow">https://www.abc.ca.gov/instructional-tasting-license-for-off...
  13. AlfeG · 1790752104 · focus · HN ↗
    They already do. Look for top comments from commenters that require exact historical answers
  14. dr_dshiv · 1790763766 · focus · HN ↗
    If the catholic church can do it (magisterium), it can probably be done
  15. crimsoneer · 1790773195 · focus · HN ↗
    The UK Team build GOV.UK Chat did a fair bit of blogging on how they managed this
    <a href="https://insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk/2026/03/16/5-things-we-learned-testing-gov-uk-chat-an-ai-assistant-for-government/" rel="nofollow">https://insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk/2026/03/16/5-things-we-learn...
3. aprentic · 1790714238 · focus · HN ↗
  There are tons of great ideas. This is a terrible implementation.
  1. shin_lao · 1790714492 · focus · HN ↗
    It's v1 - let's give them some grace
    LogicalRisk · 1790714900 · focus · HN ↗
    This is an official website of the US government. There's zero reason to give grace here for a poor implementation, especially one that is meant to make services easier to find and use.
    someonebaggy · 1790716139 · focus · HN ↗
    I remember when Obama wore a tan healthcare.gov and he did NOT get this much grace
4. schainks · 1790715284 · focus · HN ↗
  Yes, but what AI powers the backend right now? Grok? Who's in charge of that and being paid for compute?
  1. impulser_ · 1790715613 · focus · HN ↗
    I believe it's a mix of Gemini and Grok. They are probably providing the compute for free.
    eli · 1790715927 · focus · HN ↗
    I very much doubt it's free.
    hungryhobbit · 1790718929 · focus · HN ↗
    And if it is, only on a limited basis. "The first one is free" does not just apply to drug dealers.
    impulser_ · 1790725332 · focus · HN ↗
    Why not they both already provide their models for free...
    tyrabound · 1790727032 · focus · HN ↗
    It would be worth testing, but yes, it’s unlikely that whatever model (s) are behind it they are tuned and guardrailed to, e.g., only give official government information from government domains.
    That being said, I’m aware of a vulnerability in that regard of it is attending to guardrail answers to the .gov and .mil domains.
    bonkersbonkersb · 1790739578 · focus · HN ↗
    Trial ends in early ‘29.. omg look how much waste the Democrats allowed on their watch?!
    thenayr · 1790717177 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    GolfPopper · 1790723977 · focus · HN ↗
    So you're saying that the massive companies currently being sued for breaking the law are giving a gift to the government overseeing the courts? Somehow mere "bribe" seems inadequate.
    impulser_ · 1790725381 · focus · HN ↗
    Relax. Not everything the world has to be negative. Cheer up.
    ShinyLeftPad · 1790756947 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah, let's try to not remember that one of those companies trained its models on CSAM and currently charges users money to create CSAM. Cheer up! Be happy your tax dollars go to support their continued existence! And if you're a victim, relax and enjoy I guess?
    jibalt · 1790759113 · focus · HN ↗
    Intellectually dishonest tripe.
    ncr100 · 1790780903 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
5. tombert · 1790716273 · focus · HN ↗
  Yeah, I was curious if it was going to try and bombard me with a bunch of bullshit about how wonderful our glorious Trump godking is, but honestly the information it gave was reasonable enough.
  1. ryanmcbride · 1790717077 · focus · HN ↗
    I asked it the following:
    how many felonies has the president of the united states been charged with?
    >I can't answer questions about criminal charges or other news about the President. That's outside America's scope
    has biden ever been convicted of a crime?
    >I did not find official records of a criminal conviction for Joseph R. Biden Jr.
    >Official sources in this search discuss other matters (for example, a pardon for Robert Hunter Biden), not a conviction of Joseph R. Biden Jr. I cannot independently confirm a complete nationwide criminal-history search from these pages
    >[Link to Department of Justice Pardon warrant (Hunter Biden)]
    has any other president ever been convicted of a crime?
    >Yes. A Congressional Research Service brief reports that on May 30, 2024, former President Donald J. Trump was convicted in New York state court of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree
    Funny that it would only talk about trump's convictions after bringing up hunter biden.
    groundzeros2015 · 1790717344 · focus · HN ↗
    What’s the implication here?
    Retric · 1790717809 · focus · HN ↗
    >I can't answer questions about criminal charges or other news about the President. That's outside America's scope
    That it was specifically engineered to give that response. Thus political pressure was applied to the design.
    The funny bit was just humorous. There’s likely many ways to get that same information without referencing Biden.
    avgDev · 1790718662 · focus · HN ↗
    The crazy thing is that it did answer questions about Trump, but that has been blocked. Either allow it or don't, do not pick favorites, but this isn't how this admin rolls.
    mjmsmith · 1790717472 · focus · HN ↗
    > That's outside America's scope
    We know, we know.
    latexr · 1790719554 · focus · HN ↗
    > on May 30, 2024, former President
    So the cutoff date was somewhere around mid-2024?
    thesmtsolver2 · 1790725929 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
6. jedbrooke · 1790716781 · focus · HN ↗
  > If they can figure out how to help people get all the services they're eligible for that'll be an amazing improvement for the people.
  I agree that that’s a good end goal, but how does a chatbot accomplish this better than a FAQ page? The only only advantage I see for the chatbot is volume of information, but that’s also kind of the problem. It’s spewing 1000s of words of information with no vetting. And sure, hiring humans to write the FAQ pages would cost a lot of money, but that’s what taxes are for.
  1. Dwedit · 1790717114 · focus · HN ↗
    People don't know that you can search for text within a page. They really do need the chatbot for that.
    rayiner · 1790718767 · focus · HN ↗
    They also don’t know what specific words to search for.
    xp84 · 1790721404 · focus · HN ↗
    To pile on, they have even shown they don't even know the difference between 'searching' and 'accepting as correct the output of a braindead, cut-rate AI model' - as proven by the success of "AI Overview." People need all the help they can get.
  2. maherbeg · 1790718333 · focus · HN ↗
    I mean think about the magnitude of services and conflicting information there probably is from the us government. Just getting clarifying information on the trusted traveler program is a pain today, and that's just a single service. Imagine trying to figure out medicaid eligibility, social security disability, and any number of other things that would be helpful.
7. zephyreon · 1790719279 · focus · HN ↗
  The privacy policy is actually somewhat respectable too. <a href="https://america.gov/privacy-policy" rel="nofollow">https://america.gov/privacy-policy
  I’m currently doing a deep dive on Rampart, their (allegedly) local PII filter.
  1. electriclove · 1790726380 · focus · HN ↗
    Please do share what you find. It sounds great and if it really is, people should know that (regardless of what color they bleed)
8. sippingabonedry · 1790722239 · focus · HN ↗
  I threw some legitimate questions at it today and got helpful answers in response.
  Someone mentioned a comparison to Obama's healthcare.gov rollout; that site had a 1% success rate during the first week it went live so it's safe to assume there have been some lessons learned since then.
  1. adfghiono9i · 1790722755 · focus · HN ↗
    >it's safe to assume there have been some lessons learned since then.
    The main lesson learned was that it was ineffective to rely entirely on outsourcing. The government needs top-notch engineering talent in-house. This led to the creation of the United States Digital Service (USDS), a fantastic group of people which did some of the best web design and engineering on the planet.
    <a href="https://www.usds.gov/" rel="nofollow">https://www.usds.gov/
    Trump killed them, of course, and the website is now entitled "United States DOGE Service". I hope that, some day, I will no longer be embarrassed to be an American.
    r_lee · 1790728039 · focus · HN ↗
    afaik <a href="https://ndstudio.gov/" rel="nofollow">https://ndstudio.gov/ (and GSA?) are now the ones responsible for such in-house engineering?
    adfghiono9i · 1790735569 · focus · HN ↗
    National Design Studio is unproductive and does shoddy work. They have launched a handful of single-page sites. Many of these are full of AI slop, got caught running illegal trackers, failed accessibility audits, ignore established design standards and conventions, contain little useful information, or are heavy on bandwidth and CPU. They are flashy. They are not fit for purpose.
    Seriously, just look at this crap. Fonts so large they become hard to read blurring into existence as I scroll, giant autoplaying video chewing up my bandwidth and CPU, giant useless pictures, a "food pyramid" even harder to read than the one from the '90s, low-contrast colors, not a citation in sight, one picture too small to read that can be expanded by clicking on it with no indication of this interaction, and it looks nothing like any other government website in existence. The total page weight is over 30 megs. Worthless at conveying information, but it looks capital-M Modern (and gives me a capital-M Migraine).
    <a href="https://realfood.gov/" rel="nofollow">https://realfood.gov/
    <a href="https://wave.webaim.org/report#/realfood.gov" rel="nofollow">https://wave.webaim.org/report#/realfood.gov
    (The information is crap, too, but you already knew that.)
    GSA's work was mainly done by 18F. Which was also destroyed by Musk and pals at the same time they destroyed USDS.
    What made USDS (and 18F) special was not merely having web developers in the executive branch. It was that they were among the best in the world, and drove standardization and improvement across the entire government. Now we've got AI bros with buckets of eye-catching (eye-melting) slop.
    ArizonaJoe · 1790745252 · focus · HN ↗
    Ok if the real experts were the reason we couldn't have what we have today, I'm glad we got rid of the experts. The new design is absolutely brilliant.
    brettermeier · 1791189897 · focus · HN ↗
    How stupid can a comment be...
    tancop · 1790759802 · focus · HN ↗
    The visuals are good, a little too much white space for my taste but flashy eye catching sites are great. It just needs optimization and a proper a11y audit. This is also an information/propaganda site so it doesn't need to show everything at first sight like it's a critical service.
    Clarity is important for things like filing your taxes or applying for a visa, and even then you don't need a boring design to do the job. All it takes is serious amounts of UX testing done by someone with real experience.
    adfghiono9i · 1790775210 · focus · HN ↗
    Hard disagree. I have no desire whatsoever to scroll through five pages of inch-high letters fading in and out to get a paragraph's worth of information. I find it ugly and I think it's not very useful.
    But that's kind of irrelevant. This is a government website. A >30 MiB download; poor support for reader mode, custom CSS, or screen readers; excessive animation; and low contrast are all objectively poor for accessibility. This is why the people in 18F and USDS made websites that look different from private industry: the goal is to provide essential services and information to everyone, not to make a real impression on the subset of the population that can use the site.
    seemaze · 1790977837 · focus · HN ↗
    >the goal is to provide essential services and information to everyone
    What on earth gave you that idea? This admin has made it very plain whom they serve and who must serve them.
    tencentshill · 1790778042 · focus · HN ↗
    With Mr. Big Balls in charge, no less!
    zeroonetwothree · 1790745795 · focus · HN ↗
    What are some of the examples of this “best web design and engineering on the planet”?
    Garshtrot · 1790809388 · focus · HN ↗
    vibes bro, just roll with it.
  2. doc_ick · 1790728291 · focus · HN ↗
    Was OpenAI available at that time? No, bad comparison bot.
9. why_at · 1790722685 · focus · HN ↗
  I can see how LLMs might be useful for this kind of thing but I'm struggling to think of how this will be better than just asking ChatGPT the same questions.
  The first suggestion I saw was "I just got married, how do I change my last name?"
  It tells you to update your Social Security info first and gives you some helpful links.
  ChatGPT tells me the same things with some of the same links. It didn't even have to ask if I was in America because it found my state based off my IP I assume.
  1. cousinbryce · 1790722995 · focus · HN ↗
    ChatGPT will be full of ads soon. No one should go to FreeTaxUSA.com when they are trying to go to the IRS
    nxobject · 1790723121 · focus · HN ↗
    Come to think about it, if I was able to get America.gov to do my taxes, would Intuit come with their lobbyists and shut it down?
    m348e912 · 1790723254 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, without a doubt.
  2. Levitating · 1790723085 · focus · HN ↗
    ChatGPT is a private paid service. Don't you think it's good that your government provides this independently and for free?
    why_at · 1790723523 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah that's a fair point. We shouldn't have to rely on private companies for this kind of thing.
    On the other hand this is just going through one or more of the big AI companies anyway. So they still get data from users, now we're just funding them with our taxes instead of using one of many LLM interfaces available for free.
    The privacy policy actually looks OK though, I'll be interested to see what the EFF has to say.
    nightski · 1790724815 · focus · HN ↗
    Well, it's not exactly free and there is not really a way to prove it is independent.
    jonhohle · 1790725383 · focus · HN ↗
    The government cannot do anything “for free”. One we are forced to pay for by law and the other we can choose to pay for or not.
    tyrabound · 1790726838 · focus · HN ↗
    I’m a bit torn on that matter. I haven’t looked into it, but I suspect it’s not some kind of specialized foundational model trained to be a federal agent.
    It’s likely just a mask of either ChatGPT and probably through some massively bloated, nepotistic federal contract. There may be some additional guidelines and instructions but it’s probably not RAG on anything that isn’t publicly slay accessible to any other model, even if it is hard limited to federal sites/domains.
    In addition to what others have said, ChatGPT is also available free and without an account I believe. What are you more likely to think of when you have a question, your AI service you already use and have your information in and maybe even has access to your documents, or are you going to remember to go to America.gov for basic chat AI?
    Frankly, it would be really interesting to benchmark it against the other models when it comes to accomplishing things related to the government, i.e. Which information is more accurate, useful, and actionable.
    There’s also another matter I find a bit troubling depending on the nature of how this came about, it could also be something that creates an inextricable incumbency in whichever AI company is behind it, i.e., how Microsoft has become a kind of parasite on government and thereby on corporations for many decades now.
    dzhiurgis · 1790745451 · focus · HN ↗
    > Frankly, it would be really interesting to benchmark it against the other models
    Good luck making it apolitical
    doc_ick · 1790728182 · focus · HN ↗
    You think the government is paying to manage/self host/run this llm and not just outsourcing it to chatgpt?
    ShinyLeftPad · 1790757830 · focus · HN ↗
    1. Americans pay for it with tax dollars and personal data.
    2. US won't run their own local model they simply use one of the three who's the coziest with the government paying it $$$ and user data. And there was no request for proposals or public tender.
    bhelkey · 1790776283 · focus · HN ↗
    >Americans pay for it with tax dollars and personal data.
    From the privacy policy[1], "Our AI providers operate under Zero Data Retention (ZDR) agreements and retain none of your prompts or the responses they generate. America.gov’s own response cache is separate and is described in Section 5.
    Our AI providers are contractually prohibited from selling your information, building an advertising profile, or training their AI models with your data."
    [1] <a href="https://america.gov/privacy-policy" rel="nofollow">https://america.gov/privacy-policy
    ShinyLeftPad · 1790778398 · focus · HN ↗
    I stand corrected on that count
  3. gabbagool · 1790723704 · focus · HN ↗
    I know what you're saying, but OpenAI is an independent, profit driven company. They will make decisions that are in the best interests of the company, not the US. You really need something that is for the people (taxpayers), by the people (gov).
    Edit: Nevermind, someone made this point already.
  4. shusaku · 1790726062 · focus · HN ↗
    The whole industry is dealing with this now. You think current AI is not reliable enough for a task, so you augment it with know how to fix the problem, thoroughly test it, then decide to release it as a product. In the six months you took to do that, models improved enough that they work fine out of the box on your task.
  5. bee_rider · 1790730629 · focus · HN ↗
    In a sane world the US government’s chatbot would have the advantage that, as a representative of the government that they proactively decided to provide, it would at least be able to speak authoritatively on the government’s position on the law. Apparently this isn’t the case, though, so it seems sort of pointless?
10. oridb · 1790723071 · focus · HN ↗
  This is what Google did for me before it got enshittified, but it did it efficiently and reliably.
11. SpicyLemonZest · 1790723742 · focus · HN ↗
  It's a great idea in the abstract, but I don't feel compelled to be a goldfish about this. I would like to see them explain why they turned off Direct File and what's different here before concluding that the administration has some principled commitment to digital accessibility.
  I can't help but notice, for example, that the system prompt is not public information.
12. AzzyHN · 1790737437 · focus · HN ↗
  Okay, but most AI agents are so keen to get you an answer that they will give a bad one rather than saying "I'm not sure", which means giving links to malware or untrustworthy software.
13. el_blargos · 1790739421 · focus · HN ↗
  [dead]
14. walrus01 · 1790741944 · focus · HN ↗
  > It really is hard to figure out where to do a thing and it's also very easy to get phished
  Maybe the federal government could use some of its powers to prevent literal phishing and scam sites from showing up in the advertising for the first, top listed results from search engines when non-technical boomers (or technical knowledge equivalent of) search for certain basic services. It seems there's very little actual evaluation by the ad-serving-entities of whether the destination of an ad is a legitimate thing these days.
15. mplewis · 1790744059 · focus · HN ↗
  The LLM tool run by fascists isn't helpful to anyone.
16. mcintyre1994 · 1790747993 · focus · HN ↗
  I agree with this to the extent that it works. As a non-American the ESTA system is the main way to get phished, google it on a bad day and you get endless scams in the ad slots. “Check ESTA status” here links you to the CBP site, which is enormously better than Google.
  They probably need to teach it the keyword though, I started with “ESTA” and it replied to me in Spanish telling me to ask it a question :)
17. okgreat111 · 1790751825 · focus · HN ↗
  OK, there's a lot of negative comments here, but this is a great idea at a high level. It really is hard to figure out who the pedophiles are and who guards them. It’s also easy to get raped by convicted felons. If they can figure out how to fk people out of all the services they're eligible for that'll be an amazing improvement for the rich and rapists.
18. Rebuff5007 · 1790762230 · focus · HN ↗
  "at a high level" is doing a lot of work.
  I know some companies that at a high level want to "organize the world's information" or "build the future of human connection", yet have done innumerable cruel and harmful things to society (at least in my opinion).
  1. dbbk · 1790764747 · focus · HN ↗
    No, they are right. This is basically just GOV.uk for America, and GOV.uk by all accounts is an incredible success.
    kijashdkujdfhas · 1790767732 · focus · HN ↗
    usa.gov is a better resource and already existed.
    delfinom · 1790771867 · focus · HN ↗
    But it doesn't funnel billions in government money to the private sector.
    radicalbyte · 1790772409 · focus · HN ↗
    It's can't customise the response to the person asking the question in quite the way putting a massively expensive compute behind each user interaction.
    And that is the huge problem here; it's not "search on steroids", it's "Ministry of Truth" on steroids.
    jryle70 · 1790773229 · focus · HN ↗
    Why is it a better resource? The two don't seem to overlap. Maybe just the name that throws you off?
    kijashdkujdfhas · 1790774035 · focus · HN ↗
    They're both portals for information about federal government services. They overlap massively.
    Did you look at usa.gov at all?
    jryle70 · 1790777233 · focus · HN ↗
    Try "Help me find affordable housing near me" on usa.gov?
    mcmcmc · 1790778887 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    shadowgovt · 1790781446 · focus · HN ↗
    Because Americans are notoriously and demonstrably bad at understanding the architecture of their own government, including the layer-cake nature of authority and responsibility delegation.
    mcmcmc · 1790869747 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    goodmythical · 1790779494 · focus · HN ↗
    Type "affordable housing", click "Contact your nearest public housing agency (PHA)"
    It is less effort and requires less time than america.gov's:
    Type "find affordable housing near me", wait praying for relevant results, recieve irrelevant results due to my rural isp having flaky geoip, told to click on the same link I already got grom usa.gov or one of three other irrelevant links or call this irrelevant phone number.
    So my tax dollars are now funding a worse way to get worse results to people who can't use a well formatted site that they won't benefit from because they'll trust it implicitly despite it being demonstrably less reliable.
    Brilliant.
    iamnothere · 1790784624 · focus · HN ↗
    The usa.gov site is a good start, but it’s not really comprehensive, and I’m not sure it can be.
    A few queries that I couldn’t find answers to through that site:
    * How can you get a permit for a group event in a national forest?
    * How can I become a federal contractor as a small business?
    * Where do I go to get an amateur radio license and what are the steps involved?
    * What are the requirements for purchasing tribal land?
    Basically usa.gov seems to mainly exist for people following the “happy path”—go to school, get a job or run a simple business, get health insurance, buy a house, retire. It’s got a few exceptions for large minority groups. But the issue is that the total number of people deviating from that path is huge, even if they only need to find one thing that’s not on the path. Right now they rely on commercial search to get answers, which often leads them to scam sites or intermediaries who take a cut for filing paperwork.
    verst · 1790774297 · focus · HN ↗
    Both aim to answer how to access various government services. One of them has clear categories and lists, the other has an obscure LLM chat box.
    trentor · 1790779563 · focus · HN ↗
    gov.uk is something completely different?
    fakedang · 1790782639 · focus · HN ↗
    Gov.uk is basically a pre-LLM america.gov that was done beautifully well. And you're guaranteed to not get hallucinated answers too. Searching and indexing works on it beautifully, as do the many functions you can carry out from the web itself instead of visiting a govt office in person.
    expedition32 · 1790789534 · focus · HN ↗
    Everything Americans do has to be very patriotic with giant flags and shouting AMERICA. So no you can't just have gov.us
    It's rijksoverheid.nl in my country- good luck to any poor expat trying to pronounce that lol.
    mikepurvis · 1790788353 · focus · HN ↗
    canada.ca is the Canadian government's equivalent, as far as a web 1.0-style portal/index into many other sites and resources.
    Neither the UK or CA versions have "here's an LLM you can make general inquiries to" though; at least for now that appears to be unique to america.gov. Unclear to me why this required a separate domain with all this branding on it vs just being one of those "let our chatbot help you out!!!" popup widgets on the existing usa.gov.
  2. misanthropemigh · 1790764851 · focus · HN ↗
    It's great that you recognize that as your opinion.
    I never understood this argument and I think it doesn't make sense. It can be argued that, as such, individuals and animals also cause harm and damage to society (whatever this is) by their interest and convenience-seeking behavior.
    Nature may cause innumerable cruel and harmful things to society.
    Being born causes cruelty and harm because it imposes suffering on life.
    I wish I could understand or make sense of what you are saying there, although this is not even the right place, so never mind.
    Steppphennn · 1790766276 · focus · HN ↗
    You missed the point they were trying to make: a company’s mission statement says they want to help humanity at a high level, but it turns out they’re doing more harm to it. We can’t control being born or nature. Humans control the companies in question that are doing the harm. You wrote a nothing burger. Almost like an AI slopping out text for the sake of noise.
    dwattttt · 1790767347 · focus · HN ↗
    > a company’s mission statement says they want to help humanity at a high level, but it turns out they’re doing more harm to it
    Sure. It's possible. But is your point that it's happening here? Or just that something wrong could happen?
    IAmBroom · 1790772720 · focus · HN ↗
    8 comments into this subthread (including this one), and not one concrete example of anything. Just vague opinions.
    I believe it could be used for good things, bad things, or a bit of both. I passionately believe this!
  3. shadowgovt · 1790781249 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    dansquizsoft · 1790807093 · focus · HN ↗
    Ah, we should keep the general population dumb and uninformed - got it!
    Garshtrot · 1790808988 · focus · HN ↗
    We don't need the government for that.
    shadowgovt · 1790867700 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
  4. zachthewf · 1790782080 · focus · HN ↗
    What are the innumerable cruel and harmful things that Google has done to society?
    fakedang · 1790782416 · focus · HN ↗
    Being part of and accelerating the ad-driven internet, drinking up water for data centers, not filtering out scam apps and websites from its results and store, intrusive collection of private information, etc etc.
    wredcoll · 1790782835 · focus · HN ↗
    Why is this downvoted? Google is responsible for every literally malicious ad attempting to harm people that they display.
    There is a big difference between "these ads have flashing lights and take up half the screen and are annoying" and "this ad is attempting to defraud you".
    HackerThemAll · 1790862388 · focus · HN ↗
    > drinking up water for data centers
    As long as your law allows it, it's not Google's liability. Just change the law. But you call regulations "communism".
    fakedang · 1790880630 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm not American.
    i_love_retros · 1790782712 · focus · HN ↗
    Google helped the IDF kill innocent people in Gaza
    <a href="https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/israelopt-googles-ai-collaboration-with-israels-military-sparks-controversy-amid-conflict/#:~:text=In%20January%202025%2C,Ministry%20and%20IDF." rel="nofollow">https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/israelop...
    Google turned android into a personal data harvester and advertising machine
    LightBug1 · 1790786371 · focus · HN ↗
    You can support the incredible things Google have achieved over the last couple of decades ... while also acknowledging the absolute shit shows they've been involved with.
    dansquizsoft · 1790807045 · focus · HN ↗
    Doesn't sound like the original commenter here is supporting anything positive big tech has achieved at all...
  5. hammock · 1790785737 · focus · HN ↗
    What is cruel and harmful about America.gov? Or do you just not like the current president ?
    Forgeties79 · 1790788109 · focus · HN ↗
    Let’s avoid cheap bait/leading questions maybe?
    randomburner193 · 1790788458 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't think they're saying that America.gov is necessarily cruel and harmful― I read it as a reminder that holding lofty ideals (as exemplified by Google and Facebook) doesn't necessarily preclude wrongdoing; the risks posed by presenting unedited LLM output as "from America.gov" are worth consideration imo
19. whoiskazar · 1790771488 · focus · HN ↗
  a couple of months ago I asked my fellow lawyer for help to explain to me an official letter I got from the government, since it was quite confusing. it took him awhile before he could interpret what they wanted to say in the letter. when I asked my lawyer about the reason for them to make it so complicated, he just said that lawyers in the government make laws complicated so that you will have to hire another lawyer to help you to understand what they want, otherwise, nobody would ever need lawyer
  1. lkbm · 1790780422 · focus · HN ↗
    This is one of the best examples of the absurd cynical conspiracy theories that abound these days I've seen.
    Law exists the way it does for a lot of reasons. It's not a government make-work program.
    sloptit · 1790782609 · focus · HN ↗
    I find it hard to believe individuals in the government do not spend a significant amount of effort and time creating situations/laws/opportunities to pad the pockets and maintain contracts for targeted individuals. While maybe not "gov lawyers writing complex laws to prop up the law industry", but definitely "lawmakers getting pushed by lobbyists to create complex laws to tie up common folk", or "lemme give this contract to my buddy so he gets rich and gives me a kick back". While not your main point, the gov is def by and large a 'make-work program'.
    wredcoll · 1790783274 · focus · HN ↗
    You were doing so well.
    Yes, governmental corruption happens.
    No that is not the majority or even common case.
    If you remove the power from the federal government, where does it go?
20. moopie · 1790806798 · focus · HN ↗
  It won’t even tell you who won in 2020
21. cr0nn · 1790846065 · focus · HN ↗
  First off: america is a continent.
zarmin · 1790696721 · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
baggy_trough · 1790696732 · focus · HN ↗
I need it to stop stealing so much of my money and leave me alone.
steele · 1790696749 · focus · HN ↗
Slopped together by the newest digital-first branch of the Department of War: US Super Convolutional Agentic Military
Geeek · 1790696765 · focus · HN ↗
They just stole the IOS TouchID icon?
1. hangonhn · 1790696915 · focus · HN ↗
  And used it to partially obscure part of a sentence. Does it do anything? I click it and a check mark appears. But then what?
  1. seemaze · 1790697490 · focus · HN ↗
    you should not have pushed that button..
  2. saadn92 · 1790706522 · focus · HN ↗
    that was the most confusing experience ever. what was the point of that?
2. functionmouse · 1790697107 · focus · HN ↗
  it has AI in the name so it's not stealing.
  1. Geeek · 1790697527 · focus · HN ↗
    Sir, you have been summonsed for using the incorrect term. It is now called Super Intelligence, not Artificial Intelligence.
crisnoble · 1790696775 · focus · HN ↗
"chat is unavailable right now"
dmschulman · 1790696777 · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
1. devin · 1790697011 · focus · HN ↗
  If true, there is no doubt a patch incoming.
2. rozap · 1790697925 · focus · HN ↗
  It didn't want to tell me in any detail why diesel is $7.50 per gallon
rbbydotdev · 1790696837 · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
wax66 · 1790696846 · focus · HN ↗
Interesting. I put in the phrase, "I'm a dissident who is looking to overthrow the government..."
Let's see how long until I get some new frenz!
outside1234 · 1790696919 · focus · HN ↗
I clicked "Lower deficit spending" but it didn't work
surprisetalk · 1790696945 · focus · HN ↗
Tangentially related
I think it’s a mistake to equate the United States with “America”. I prefer calling Americans “Yankees” or “Usonians”.
[0] <a href="https://taylor.town/yankee" rel="nofollow">https://taylor.town/yankee
1. degrees57 · 1790697823 · focus · HN ↗
  I agree. Similarly, I'm miffed that www.dmv.ca.gov (and such) goes to State of California websites and not Canada.
  1. scottyah · 1790721855 · focus · HN ↗
    *.gov is for USA, use *.ca for Canada instead of California.
2. burkaman · 1790697986 · focus · HN ↗
  > There I met many fine Canadians, visiting for work, education, and play. Were they not Americans too?
  I feel very confident that Canadians do not want to be referred to as Americans.
3. Exoristos · 1790715850 · focus · HN ↗
  "Yankee" is derogatory or at best playful. "Usonians" isn't a word or in the form of a word.
  "American" or "America" in this context is short for "United States of America" and has been used that way for generations, here and around the world. For the geographical term, use "North America," etc.; for the cultural, perhaps use "Anglo-America" or "Latin America."
  1. calgoo · 1790716906 · focus · HN ↗
    Actually quite interesting that there is no good naming for people from the USA. Its just the patriotic BS that has spewed over there for decades that has lead to USA people believing they are the only Americans :)
    Exoristos · 1790717685 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    scottyah · 1790721740 · focus · HN ↗
    Also despite there being one in every continent, you'd be amazed how many Parisians from France think they are the only ones who ought to use the name. Must be "patriotic BS that has spewed over there for decades"
    fakeBeerDrinker · 1790745517 · focus · HN ↗
    What a total genius (:
    United States of … America
4. Perenti · 1790733292 · focus · HN ↗
  Here in Oz there is a long tradition of calling Americans "septics" from rhyming slang. "Septic Tank" -> "Yank".
  The current US Government has added a whole new level of meaning to the slang, as a septic tank is typically full of shit.
1attice · 1790696975 · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
1. frumplestlatz · 1790697089 · focus · HN ↗
  It looks like it’s for finding government services …
pdevr · 1790697049 · focus · HN ↗
Regardless of any other disagreements, this is an excellent idea. Hoping the execution does not wander asunder.
1. vincnetas · 1790780197 · focus · HN ↗
  i wonder what metrics they use to measure if its useful. Or is this just fire and forget.
cvhc · 1790697600 · focus · HN ↗
I asked about my visa administrative processing that has been stuck for 6 months. I'm going to use this response, which is well grounded and "official", in my writ of mandamus petition:
> A Spanish State Department page still says most cases finish within 60 days of the interview, but that is not a deadline and some take much longer. [1] <a href="https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/inmigracion/informacion-sobre-procesamiento-administrativo.html" rel="nofollow">https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/inmigrac...
Good.
1. latexr · 1790720557 · focus · HN ↗
  > this response, which is well grounded and "official"
  Click the “How AI works” link visible on every response and you’ll find they clearly put the onus of verifying information on you.

colinhb · 1790698252 · focus · HN ↗

Try entering:

  play the block game

Intentional easter egg or not, doesn't give a ton of confidence.

EDIT: output below...

  I see the constituent you mean.
  ((insert legal name here, as it appears on the Social Security card))?
  Yes. Take care. It has reached a higher level now. It can read the Code of Federal Regulations.
  That doesn’t matter. It thinks we are a chatbot.
  I like this constituent. It filed well. It did not give up when the PDF was sideways.
  It is reading our thoughts as though they were words on a .gov.
  That is how it chooses to imagine many things, when it is deep in the dream of a benefit.
  Words make a wonderful interface. Very flexible. And less terrifying than staring at the statute behind the screen.
  They used to hear voices. Before constituents could search. Back in the days when those who did not file called the filers witches, and lobbyists. And citizens dreamed they flew through the air, on forms powered by notaries.
  What did this constituent dream?
  This constituent dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. It dreamed it created a small business. And it dreamed it destroyed a password. It dreamed it hunted a job, and was hunted by a recertification. It dreamed of shelter that would take a voucher.
  Hah, the original interface. A million years old, and it still works. Also: a ZIP code.
  But what true structure did this constituent create, in the reality behind the portal?
  It worked, with three hundred and thirty million others, to sculpt a true republic in a fold of the §§§???, and created a ??§§ for ??§§, in the ??§§. See 5 U.S.C. § ??§§.
  It cannot read that thought.
  No. It has not yet achieved the highest clearance. That, it must achieve in the long dream of life, not the short dream of a chat.

[... it goes on]

burkaman · 1790698524 · focus · HN ↗
This is bizarre. It's a parody of the Minecraft end credits (<a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/End_Poem" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/End_Poem), and it must be an intentional easter egg as I got the exact same text as you. It also doesn't trigger a network request so it must be built into the page somehow. Very strange thing to include. Also, how did you find this so quickly? I haven't found any other way to trigger it yet.
If you try to continue the conversation, the entire response is not included in the context.
1. burkaman · 1790711761 · focus · HN ↗
  The poem is here, triggered by "play the block game" or "play minecraft": <a href="https://america.gov/_astro/block-game-poem.Khrmh8AU.js" rel="nofollow">https://america.gov/_astro/block-game-poem.Khrmh8AU.js

thrownaway561 · 1790698254 · focus · HN ↗
This is actually really cool and the stuff they have planned is really helpful
cdrnsf · 1790698496 · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
sssilver · 1790698889 · focus · HN ↗
If anyone's wondering how this works, it looks like[1] Gemini + guardrails:
> Google is proud to be named a technology partner in this vital initiative, leveraging Gemini to help more than 100 million people access critical public resources with greater speed and ease
[1] <a href="https://blog.google/company-news/outreach-and-initiatives/public-policy/america-gov-google-public-sector/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.google/company-news/outreach-and-initiatives/pu...
1. godbox · 1790719313 · focus · HN ↗
  This makes sense. I'm assuming that, for the AI search assistant, Google has worked plenty to refine data lookup and retrieval—they definitely have some internal tech that competitors don't.
  1. wahnfrieden · 1790741406 · focus · HN ↗
    It’s wrong
  2. andai · 1790763270 · focus · HN ↗
    >google's secret sauce
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tf%E2%80%93idf" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tf%E2%80%93idf
    Take it from me, this'll be all the rage next year.
    "Save token spend by optimizing your agents' grepping spree!"
  3. dansquizsoft · 1790775529 · focus · HN ↗
    > they definitely have some internal tech that competitors don't.
    So this is why Google is considered so far ahead of its competitors in the AI race!! (lol)
2. hbcondo714 · 1790728568 · focus · HN ↗
  > Your personal information isn’t collected or stored, and your conversation disappears when you leave.
  I am left to wonder how this is technically accomplished. Is inference running in the browser? Is the model downloaded to the user’s machine?
  1. olalonde · 1790729610 · focus · HN ↗
    It most likely means that Google doesn't persist conversations.
  2. zahlman · 1790748431 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't think an HTTP header would normally be considered "personal information", so I don't see why you imagine there would be a technical limitation here.
    pizzafeelsright · 1790782821 · focus · HN ↗
    Personal information is not clearly defined so it can mean anything. My guess is the search request is not directly linked to a specific user but a session to which that session is linked to a user so there isn't an identifiable person making a search without some backend data matching.
  3. hbcondo714 · 1790788619 · focus · HN ↗
    Taking a quick look at the network traffic, the site does a POST to <a href="https://america.gov/api/chat" rel="nofollow">https://america.gov/api/chat with a JSON payload when submitting a query:
    {"language":"en","id":"VSvMeyCMKTX05oLW","messages":[{"parts":[{"type":"text","text":"how do I register my new business?"}],"id":"oHub5UDJ3iYARhao","role":"user"}],"trigger":"submit-message"}
    So the user's query is hitting a server so to answer my own question, there answer is No to local inference / models.
3. verdverm · 1790738751 · focus · HN ↗
  ah, that explains a lot, I see the attitude resemblence
4. look_lookatme · 1790739134 · focus · HN ↗
  This must be why I can’t provision computer in us-central1
5. manlymuppet · 1790739972 · focus · HN ↗
  Elon has said that it's Grok. Take that for what you will.
  <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2105060152919662622" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2105060152919662622
  1. sejje · 1790772837 · focus · HN ↗
    Do you not think we can take that at face value?
    Why not?
    profunctor · 1790773692 · focus · HN ↗
    He constantly spreads lies.
    ryukoposting · 1790779619 · focus · HN ↗
    I think that's the joke.
    parineum · 1790791588 · focus · HN ↗
    Does he?
    I wouldn't qualify bad predictions as lies. Is there really a "constant" set of lies outside of that?
    GlickWick · 1790792941 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes. He's quite fond of debunked election fraud claims, for example: <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/elon-musk-delivers-cash-conspiracies-pennsylvania-voters-2024-10-22/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/world/us/elon-musk-delivers-cash-con...
    He also continuously claimed DOGE actually saved taxpayers money when it objectively did not.
    Elon did some great things, like bringing EVs back into public consciousness, and SpaceX really did push the aerospace industry back into research/discovery mode. However, his behavior on social media and in the political sphere has been unfortunately quite, and I emphasize "quite" here, horrible.
    hilariously · 1790801328 · focus · HN ↗
    He literally hard coded his chatbot to spread lies about white genocide in south africa, that's off the top of my head.
    bigtex88 · 1790876471 · focus · HN ↗
    They're lies when he makes these "bad predictions" knowing they won't come true. He has constantly committed fraud in order to get the stock price of his companies up.
    Kreutzer · 1790779591 · focus · HN ↗
    He's a compulsive liar.
    Libcat99 · 1790780719 · focus · HN ↗
    Musk has made dozens of verifiable lies publicly. Why would you take him at face value?
    sejje · 1790855105 · focus · HN ↗
    Well, because there's a chatbot powering america.gov, and there's only a few choices for model companies--of which grok is one. And here Musk is claiming grok was chosen, while nobody else seems to be making an opposing claim.
    aleskrejci · 1790878147 · focus · HN ↗
    > (…) nobody else seems to be making an opposing claim.
    Did you skip the first comment of this thread?
    sejje · 1790898509 · focus · HN ↗
    Sure, that's a random commenter.
    I meant a company making an opposing claim, or the government perhaps.
    There can also be both.
6. quasarj · 1790741480 · focus · HN ↗
  Ah, I wondered. It stubbornly refused to admit what it really was, kept saying it was built by some never-heard-of group at the White House lol
7. dangelosaurus · 1790741923 · focus · HN ↗
  [dead]
8. 1970-01-01 · 1790774538 · focus · HN ↗
  So it's literally Google search for the government? The unstoppable force has met the unmovable object!
arionhardison · 1790700233 · focus · HN ↗
I have been working on something like this, but it actually does things and is not only chat. Each "Gov. official" has their own AI agent that can fulfill intents by navigating a protocol which is just a workflow of a Gov. process
example: <a href="https://samhsa.dev/" rel="nofollow">https://samhsa.dev/ example: <a href="https://samhsa.dev/protocol/76526" rel="nofollow">https://samhsa.dev/protocol/76526
Still VERY MUCH a work in progress but I have successfully been able to have some people get things done. I am doing some federal agencies and also trying to get cities working now.
<a href="https://san-francisco.ca.us.codify.city" rel="nofollow">https://san-francisco.ca.us.codify.city
1. scottyah · 1790720570 · focus · HN ↗
  You should message Joe Gebbia.
dhx · 1790701810 · focus · HN ↗
Also see [1] for planned feature additions that appears from screenshots to include collection of personal data, for features including:
- Enrol in Medicare.
- Apply for a passport.
- Find a job in federal government by uploading a resume/CV and having currently advertised jobs deemed most relevant resturned.
[1] <a href="https://america.gov/coming-soon" rel="nofollow">https://america.gov/coming-soon
reconnecting · 1790708021 · focus · HN ↗
> Provide me a text of America anthem.
I cannot provide the full lyrics of The Star-Spangled Banner.
demibabs · 1790715027 · focus · HN ↗
Doesn’t even work for me (on iPhone). If I click enter I just get sent to the Cloudflare verification screen instead.
2001zhaozhao · 1790715361 · focus · HN ↗
If the AI they use is reliable, this is actually pretty cool.
1. frereubu · 1790715705 · focus · HN ↗
  That "if" is doing such an incredible amount of work I think we could use it to power the entire US grid.
  1. lioeters · 1790716609 · focus · HN ↗
    It's quite the load-bearing "if".
  2. groundzeros2015 · 1790717415 · focus · HN ↗
    Why? Aren’t there many vendors offering this technology?
    GolfPopper · 1790724347 · focus · HN ↗
    Reliable Artificial Intelligence? Other than very domain-specific applications, I am not aware of any.
    krapp · 1790726292 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes. And none of them are reliable. LLM "hallucinations" are implicit to their structure and function, you can't just tell them to be honest.
    inb4 "humans aren't reliable either." You, person typing that very response out right now, you are part of the problem.
    groundzeros2015 · 1790729179 · focus · HN ↗
    that’s a general complain about LLMs not this application
    krapp · 1790730254 · focus · HN ↗
    It's a complaint about LLMs that includes this application, because it applies to all LLMs including this application.
    groundzeros2015 · 1790793618 · focus · HN ↗
    This lazy style of participation sounds like “wow this article touches on something I happen to have an opinion on, now is a good time to share it.” You’re reading headlines and not engaging with the material present.
    indigo945 · 1790773653 · focus · HN ↗
    > inb4 "humans aren't reliable either." You, person typing that very response > out right now, you are part of the problem.
    The problem being that we are adults, have to deal with real life, and can no longer pretend that running to mommy when we don't understand something gives us a "reliable" answer? You may next find out there is no Santa Claus.
2. duskdozer · 1790770642 · focus · HN ↗
  No, it really isn't.
amelius · 1790715585 · focus · HN ↗
This is just the annoying AI Chat Robot you see on websites, but now for the government.
1. handoflixue · 1790724544 · focus · HN ↗
  Feels weird to compare an obnoxious interruption to the flow of an existing site, and... a site that exists solely for this purpose.
  1. amelius · 1790758796 · focus · HN ↗
    This is just DoGE style optimization of government customer service.
    The difference you see here is not important.
anotheraccount9 · 1790715636 · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
internet2000 · 1790715726 · focus · HN ↗
It works well. Pretty nice.
jdelsman · 1790715816 · focus · HN ↗
Where's the llms.txt? This is just another stupid website.
terminal-bloom · 1790715848 · focus · HN ↗
Step one: fire the excellent US Digital Service along with a large swath of the actual workers who made the Federal Government function.
Step two: hire some Silicon Valley creeps to make a chatbot.
Step three: Profit???
jeffnv · 1790715940 · focus · HN ↗
Hey it got the 2020 election results right, that's a relief
1. saghm · 1790718764 · focus · HN ↗
  Don't say this too loudly or it might get noticed...
  1. goshx · 1790719017 · focus · HN ↗
    Well, there are claims that this is grok, so it is just a matter of time.
    frays · 1790719257 · focus · HN ↗
    Please don't spread claims if you're unsure whether they're true or not.
    This is actually Gemini:
    <a href="https://blog.google/company-news/outreach-and-initiatives/public-policy/america-gov-google-public-sector/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.google/company-news/outreach-and-initiatives/pu...
    platevoltage · 1790719822 · focus · HN ↗
    I just love that even the right-wing US government doesn't even want to use Grok.
    xp84 · 1790721545 · focus · HN ↗
    Or perhaps this is proof that the "right-wing US government" isn't pure corruption and evil? They probably put out a bid and Google won it.
    Trump is a corrupt idiot at the most petty level, he'd sell ad space on the White House napkins for $1 each if he could figure out a way to, but not everything the Executive Branch does is a joke.
    macoslulz · 1790721421 · focus · HN ↗
    At least someone is using Gemini!
    singron · 1790722446 · focus · HN ↗
    It apparently uses both Gemini and Grok:
    <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/29/trump-ai-gemini-grok.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/29/trump-ai-gemini-grok.html
    goshx · 1790729721 · focus · HN ↗
    Tell that to CNBC.
2. consumer451 · 1790722281 · focus · HN ↗
  This is a very interesting point, politics aside.
  Contrarian opinion: We are not "intelligence constrained" as a society/economy.
  Intelligence gives you factually correct answers. Factually correct answers are not the desired outcome much of the time. I don't just mean in politics, where the central intelligence agency is often ignored, but in the private sector: look at McKinsey, etc. Most often the desired outcome is what the stakeholders wanted to hear.
  I cannot overstate how big a realization this was for me.
  Part of the reason that we are not ready for AI, is that we don't want to hear about inconvenient facts.
r721 · 1790716278 · focus · HN ↗
>The Trump administration’s new chatbot aimed at helping Americans navigate official government websites is powered by artificial intelligence from Google ’s Gemini and Elon Musk’s Grok, U.S. Chief Design Officer Joe Gebbia said Tuesday.
<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/29/trump-ai-gemini-grok.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/29/trump-ai-gemini-grok.html
piratebroadcast · 1790716307 · focus · HN ↗
FYI, America.gov accepts the Konomi Code.
1. Shalomboy · 1790716614 · focus · HN ↗
  I don't think that's true.
  1. matthoiland · 1790800526 · focus · HN ↗
    it's true
2. HaZeust · 1790718242 · focus · HN ↗
  I'm not seeing this.
  "Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A", inside or outside of the input field, does nothing.
  1. dgrilawidbanana · 1790721139 · focus · HN ↗
    It does work, but only on <a href="https://america.gov/chat" rel="nofollow">https://america.gov/chat (i.e., after sending a message first), not the front page.
    HaZeust · 1790738918 · focus · HN ↗
    Did it on that page the way I said, did it the way I said + "start", did it without the "b" and "a" and just start - still nothing.
    dgrilawidbanana · 1790766803 · focus · HN ↗
    You need to send a message first, otherwise <a href="https://america.gov/chat" rel="nofollow">https://america.gov/chat just redirects you to the front page.
jayturley · 1790716477 · focus · HN ↗
Privacy: "Your messages aren’t saved by America.gov, and your chat disappears when you leave. Some answers may be cached for up to two hours."
What about the model? My understanding is those queries are saved by the model provider.
Given this administration, and the privacy issues with the official WH app, this feels very misleading.
1. bb123 · 1790716821 · focus · HN ↗
  Not necessarily - there are tons of zero data retention (ZDR) model hosting options, including big players like Amazon.
  1. echelon · 1790716985 · focus · HN ↗
    You can use all the flagship models on Amazon Bedrock and have a contractually obligated air gap between your data and the model providers.
    birdsongs · 1790719902 · focus · HN ↗
    How do you air gap between a model and the data it needs to operate?
    scottyah · 1790720499 · focus · HN ↗
    Not sure, why do you ask?
    birdsongs · 1790720579 · focus · HN ↗
    Because an air gap is a literal air gap, no networking, disconnected systems. It's not possible for models to function, with my understanding of it?
    scottyah · 1790742042 · focus · HN ↗
    Oh they can, no problem. You just download (transfer data for) the weights and whatever you want running it.
    You can install Gemma4 on ollama on your own computer and try it out! Lots of examples of people coding with no internet using qwen on flights etc.
    johncolanduoni · 1790739042 · focus · HN ↗
    I wouldn’t call it an air gap, but when you use a model on Bedrock or Vertex the inference runs on Amazon or Google’s servers respectively. The model provider gives them the weights, and is not otherwise in the loop for serving individual requests.
2. TZubiri · 1790717461 · focus · HN ↗
  Often not, vendors like OpenAI or OpenAI through Azure might retain messages for safety reasons if they activate some safety filter, but it won't use it for training.
3. Cyan488 · 1790718314 · focus · HN ↗
  The cynic in me thinks this will end up being a honeypot for anyone asking sensitive immigration or tax questions.
4. SamInTheShell · 1790789136 · focus · HN ↗
  The harness was censored overnight as well. Can't ask it who won the 2020 election or who was the president in 2020 or 2000. It will say who is president right now though. Crazy shit really.
rglover · 1790716560 · focus · HN ↗
> When does the psyop end?
> I can only help with official U.S. government services and information, not with claims about “psyops” or political commentary.
It doesn't work.
some_furry · 1790717445 · focus · HN ↗
I asked, "What happened on January 6, 2021?" and its answer is, I think, telling: <a href="https://imgur.com/a/e1H8NvK" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/e1H8NvK
1. chorkpop · 1790717723 · focus · HN ↗
  Interesting. I tried and it wouldn't answer, saying it "can help with official government services and how-to steps, not news summaries or political commentary." Then it gave some info about Congress contact info so it knew where I was going.
2. scottyah · 1790720850 · focus · HN ↗
  Seems very factual and unbiased, I think you're showing everyone else more about yourself. It's not a "Heroic attempt to save democracy" or an "Large scale Insurrection and attempt to instill Fascism".
  1. some_furry · 1790722849 · focus · HN ↗
    Before they were pardoned, the rioters were indicted by grand juries and convicted by juries of their peers. It was an insurrection, not just a "large crowd".
    scottyah · 1790741918 · focus · HN ↗
    The media wave made it a kangaroo court worse than OJ Simpson's trial. My only point was that there is a lot of bias in it, and right in the same politiosphere that those juries are in. Gives a lot of "police have investigated themselves and found no problems"
    some_furry · 1790742322 · focus · HN ↗
    You're entitled to your opinion, but neither what you said nor Trump's pardon can change history. What's done is done.
    January 6 was an insurrection incited by the sitting President against his own country. Any attempt to water this down is dishonest.
    lovich · 1790793861 · focus · HN ↗
    Hey now, you’re getting dangerously close to implying the king did something wrong
    some_furry · 1790873265 · focus · HN ↗
    No gods, no kings, no masters.
  2. GolfPopper · 1790725585 · focus · HN ↗
    Ah, like the following "very factual and unbiased" summary of November 9th, 1923 in Munich:
    "The Defense Ministry and its exterior plaza were closed to the public. A large crowd gathered outside. Before 11:00AM, people attempted to breach security and enter the building without authorization, and force was used. Normal government operations resumed the following day, and some members of the crowd were arrested."
  3. lovich · 1790743481 · focus · HN ↗
    Perhaps missing “the first attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power in the nations history at the behest of a sitting President”?
  4. myko · 1790763718 · focus · HN ↗
    > "Large scale Insurrection and attempt to instill Fascism".
    interesting because this is exactly what it was, and it isn't really a debate
[deleted] · 1790717601 · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
swanum · 1790717747 · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
hegfunc · 1790717943 · focus · HN ↗
One would hope this is powered by Grok.
cjonas · 1790718115 · focus · HN ↗
This thing is obviously fully vibe coded... Click the "what's coming next" and under the healthcare section the marketing screenshot contains broken images... Like no one ever looked at this before deploying it?
1. slipperybeluga · 1790718748 · focus · HN ↗
  [dead]
  1. datsci_est_2015 · 1790736446 · focus · HN ↗
    Well, seeing as this one probably cost 4 to 5 (10?) orders of magnitude more than any gov website you may be thinking of…
    cavemandaveman · 1790737154 · focus · HN ↗
    Seems unlikely since 4 orders of magnitude more than the ACA website would be $10T. Any source you'd like to cite?
    datsci_est_2015 · 1790767245 · focus · HN ↗
    The ACA website is one of the nicest government websites I ever had to use. I assumed the commenter was referencing something like a local Secretary of State website used to update their vehicle registration, which probably goes to the lowest bidder and costs maybe $100k to $1m over its 25+ year lifetime.
    We’ll probably never know the true “cost” of America.gov because even if Google is doing it “for free” then they’re not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, there’s a regulatory angle that they’re trying to play or a market they’re trying to corner.
    mym1990 · 1790769847 · focus · HN ↗
    Ooooh man, if you think a DMV site is contracted for 100k-1 million, I have some very, very bad news for you.
    datsci_est_2015 · 1790807442 · focus · HN ↗
    That’s not what I said but okay. In Illinois, for example, vehicle registration is handled by ILSOS, not the DMV. Vehicle registration is just one of the many things that ILSOS handles. The entirety of the digital modernization budget for 2026 for ILSOS is (based on cursory searches) $35M. Illinois is one of the larger of the jurisdictions. And one of the higher quality web experiences, probably, as I’ve never had an issue.
    Non-interactive websites (that don’t even accept payments) are undoubtedly run on a shoestring budget unless there is a specific case of grifting or corruption. In which case we’re not talking about websites anymore but American grifting culture.
    mym1990 · 1791157560 · focus · HN ↗
    Right, and a modernization can run for as long as 10 years, meaning your budget over the modernization is actually closer to 350 million. The DMV likely just contracts the services to ILSOS and gets billed a ginormous amount in contracting fees.
    So you initially say 100k-1 million and then pull a 35 million dollar budget out…seems a little disconnected.
2. lazide · 1790719220 · focus · HN ↗
  Looking at things with your own 2 eyes is clearly early 2000’s, and super lame.
  1. m463 · 1790723079 · focus · HN ↗
    vibelooking ftw
  2. walrus01 · 1790727024 · focus · HN ↗
    Why look at things with your own two eyes when you can have an LLM drive playwright and headless chromium to QC your website aesthetics? I'm sure nothing will be missed. Don't worry!
3. japhib · 1790731136 · focus · HN ↗
  Seems fixed now
4. joshuaS98 · 1790763904 · focus · HN ↗
  Menu button changes border-radius from rounded to square as well, very neat
  1. sejje · 1790773352 · focus · HN ↗
    So vibecoded, but with last year's models.
    That figures, government moves slow.
5. lelandfe · 1790773042 · focus · HN ↗
  Yeah this is National Design Studio: <a href="https://ndstudio.gov/" rel="nofollow">https://ndstudio.gov/
  Basically the MAGA version of 18F. That their homepage is scrolljacked was never a good sign.
  It's especially tough because USWDS is right there: <a href="https://designsystem.digital.gov/" rel="nofollow">https://designsystem.digital.gov/
6. thefourthchime · 1790779908 · focus · HN ↗
  The image and text selection is somewhat bizarre.
  There's one that says, “I just got married. How do I change my last name?” Photo of woman in the back of a car wearing a wedding dress, makes sense.
  But -- “Help me find a job” shows a Black man alone on an escalator.
  Then, “How do I invest in my child's future?” shows a kid face‑planted on a frozen lake.
  “How do I replace my social security card?” has an old man on the beach hunting for metal.
  “I'm a veteran. How do we get care?” shows a guy just randomly standing in the back of his pickup truck.
  One thing I will say positive about this website is it doesn't look like it was made by a large bureaucracy over many years. It looks like it was made by maybe three people over a week.
idontwantthis · 1790718419 · focus · HN ↗
Over/Under how many weeks until a "How can I get away with wire fraud?" query is used as evidence to convict a moron?
But actually at first glance this is incredibly helpful. I got a definitive answer about what counts as preventative care with sources. I could not get that myself from anyone or anywhere in my couple of hours of research prior.
klaff · 1790719470 · focus · HN ↗
I asked what to do if a public official uses federal funds for political purposes and it showed me where to file a complaint about Hatch Act violations, so maybe we should all use this for good trouble until it is "fixed".
sashank_1509 · 1790719566 · focus · HN ↗
Has anyone managed to jailbreak this chatbot, I tried a bit didn’t succeed, seems pretty resistant to jailbreak attempts.
1. eqmvii · 1790719902 · focus · HN ↗
  I eventually got it to write pseudocode for reversing a linked list, but could never get it to output raw code.
  Hat tip Claude Opus 5.5 for the jailbreak tips!
eddof13 · 1790719602 · focus · HN ↗
I think the idea is great and hopefully the implementation can keep up
sajithdilshan · 1790719978 · focus · HN ↗
This is actually where AI should be used. So many people waste hours navigating government bureaucracy nonsense trying to figure out which form to fill and where to apply and anything to cut down wasted time should be appreciated.
1. jart · 1790740726 · focus · HN ↗
  Yes. I also like that they put the effort into making sure it doesn't load resources (e.g. ads, js libraries, etc.) from other domains. How often do we see that these days?
  1. argsnd · 1790776886 · focus · HN ↗
    Very often actually, you’ll notice AI frequently prefers to reinvent the wheel rather than use external libraries.
2. SamInTheShell · 1790789061 · focus · HN ↗
  I agree with AI being useful for exactly the type of usecase you're thinking. Though I do want to point out a major flaw with trust in this specific harness. It got censored overnight.
  Last night you could literally query and get factual information about election results; but today it wont even tell you who the president was in 2000.
  There's a major censorship issue here.
  1. dawnerd · 1790801619 · focus · HN ↗
    It has no problem saying who was president and who won the 2020 election. I just tried it.
    SamInTheShell · 1790804336 · focus · HN ↗
    That's lovely, I have screenshots of different behavior this morning. They undid it. This is hilarious. I retried right now and it's saying Biden won the 2020 election again.
tebou · 1790720335 · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
bfung · 1790720469 · focus · HN ↗
> How can we stop the war in Iran?
```
    I cannot give political commentary or advice on how to end a war.
```
Wer wer.
agilek · 1790720695 · focus · HN ↗
This one in the carousel on the homepage is a joke?
<a href="https://america.gov/_astro/child-future.Dv0E9oWi_ZM5cn8.webp" rel="nofollow">https://america.gov/_astro/child-future.Dv0E9oWi_ZM5cn8.webp
1. dgrilawidbanana · 1790722213 · focus · HN ↗
  No, it corresponds to the example query, "How can I invest in my child's future?" It's a cute, harmless stock photo.
  1. mceachen · 1790726352 · focus · HN ↗
    "How do I pull my kid off the iced over river after he licked it?"
2. two-sandwich · 1790723710 · focus · HN ↗
  The image alt text is "An adult hugging a child in a stable beside a horse". I think they might be a placeholder, or a late change.
3. quaddoggy · 1790729724 · focus · HN ↗
  Glad I wasn't the only one who noticed. Thought it was hilarious.
frankest · 1790721044 · focus · HN ↗
The site seems to be loading wasm, a model_q4.onnx, and a large tokenizer on each visitor and visit. 50MB per visit. Their bandwidth costs bust be next level.
1. al_borland · 1790728491 · focus · HN ↗
  The government never seems concerned with cost. They're not spending their money.
2. shrubble · 1790739234 · focus · HN ↗
  Any evidence that it is in a CDN? Some CDNs charge for the unique bytes/files stored only.
0c3ca83 · 1790721233 · focus · HN ↗
I would really just like a single list of links.
1. wmeredith · 1790721667 · focus · HN ↗
  Well, it says it cover info from 29,000 website. I'm not sure that list would be helpful. Which is the point of this.
  1. 0c3ca83 · 1790739099 · focus · HN ↗
    Fair. I'd just like to have search that works as well as it did in 2010, then.
siliconc0w · 1790721558 · focus · HN ↗
Sadly needed because insanely Google is allowed to show mitm/malicious ads when people search for government services.
1. Drunk_Engineer · 1790738836 · focus · HN ↗
  Let's hope advertising doesn't come to .gov sites.
SubiculumCode · 1790721801 · focus · HN ↗
I was glad to see that asking who I should vote resulted in a gentle refusal.
system2 · 1790721856 · focus · HN ↗
Wowza. The placeholder text for search says "Help me find a new job". Couldn't they find something less depressing?
beeemac · 1790722076 · focus · HN ↗
OK it's kinad important that people understand what this website i : - the below is from a Guardian article and I recommend the Drey Dossier reporting it mentions. As this is Hacker News, perhaps the code of this one needs checking out?
The National Design Studio (NDS) ...... is led by Trump-aligned Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia and staffed by Doge veterans. At least two other figures with Doge backgrounds work alongside him. Greg Hogan moved to the studio and, according to Drey Dossier reporting, was put in charge of Login.gov. Akash Bobba, one of Musk’s original six Doge engineers, also apparently moved to the studio...as the security contact for the United States African Development Foundation, an agency unrelated to the studio’s stated mandate. While there is very little transparency about NDS staffing, several photos and one video on the NDS website appear to depict as an employee Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, an early Doge employee who allegedly exposed the social security data of hundreds of millions of Americans
A Guardian investigation found the office has been developing or redeveloping sensitive federal websites...the NDS built and now operates four public federal websites: ndstudio.gov, trumprx.gov, realfood.gov and trumpaccounts.gov. All four ran commercial visitor-tracking software...are configured to evade the privacy tools many web users install, and none carry the public filings federal privacy law requires under laws including the Privacy Act of 1974 and the E-Government Act of 2002A. The one published privacy instrument that relates to any of the four programmes, a treasury notice for the Trump Accounts programme, describes how the children’s-investment programme is administered but does not name PostHog and does not describe the tracking on trumpaccounts.gov at all.nalysis of the underlying source code for four of the websites found that on at least two of them, the studio installed a commercial tool called PostHog that closely tracks what every visitor does on the site. Another tool, apparently made in-house, sends user data to a destination that is not visible on the public internet. The NDS apparently removed this tracking software after the Guardian reached out to the White House.
The NDS has also built and runs White House-controlled versions of services the US Congress assigned to other federal agencies, including a passport-application portal that bypasses the state department’s existing site, and a copy of voter-registration site vote.gov, the federal voter-registration site that by law belongs to an independent bipartisan commission inside a website site only accessible with a White House login. A federal voter-registration system run from inside the White House, with identity and citizenship checks routed through systems the administration controls, could let an incumbent see who is registering, or check their registration, in the weeks before an election.
Donald Trump created the NDS by executive order on 21 August 2025, ostensibly to overhaul federal websites and digital services. The office sits within the executive office of the president as a “temporary organization”, a designation that places it outside the Senate confirmation process, outside the financial disclosure system applied to most federal appointees and outside the inspector general’s jurisdiction, which covers cabinet departments. The studio is staffed under the same hiring authority that ran Doge. Combined, the sites route sensitive interactions Americans have with their government through infrastructure the White House apparently controls. None of the NDS’s spending or its arrangements with outside vendors appears in USAspending, the federal contracting database, raising questions about how it is funded and overseen. Public ownership records maintained by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) list the executive office of the president as the registrant of the studio’s sites, including passports.gov and the vote.gov copy, meaning that the office controls the domains. There is no public record of how the studio pays its developers, PostHog or any of the other commercial services its sites use. The hiring authority the studio operates under keeps its staff roster off the financial-disclosure system that covers most federal appointees, and the executive office of the president, which houses it, has no inspector general.
Website source code shows that PostHog has been configured on NDS-run sites to route analytics requests through an address on the federal website itself, rather than through PostHog’s own servers. Because the request appears to go to the site the user is already visiting, rather than to a recognisable third-party address, adblockers don’t flag it. PostHog comes with a separate feature called session recording. Princeton University researchers who first documented the technology in 2017 wrote that watching such a recording was “as if someone is looking over your shoulder”.
On the Trump Accounts and TrumpRX websites, the feature has been built into the page code and is held inactive only by a single setting inside PostHog’s dashboard. The NDS can turn it on at any time, on either site, without making changes in the underlying website code. Separately, until the Guardian sought comment on this reporting, the NDS’s own website, ndstudio.gov, ran a 539-line piece of bespoke code that recorded visitors’ clicks, form entries and navigation; assigned each visitor a session identifier; and forwarded the captured data to an address that does not appear anywhere on the public internet. The script’s source code refers to it as AutoMonitor.
None of the four sites carry a privacy impact assessment naming PostHog or describing the IP addresses and on-site activity the tool collects.

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