White House Pushed Out New AI Official After Just Four Days on the Job
- Reference: 0182702870
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/04/25/0348249/white-house-pushed-out-new-ai-official-after-just-four-days-on-the-job
- Source link:
To run it they'd hired Collin Burns, who'd worked at OpenAI and then Anthropic. But Burns started work Monday at the Center for AI Standards and Innovation — and then " [1]was pushed out Thursday by the White House , according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations."
> Officials were concerned about Burns having worked at the AI company, which has fought bitterly with the Trump administration in recent months, according to one of the people and another person. That person said some senior figures at the White House had not been briefed on Burns's selection in advance... The new pick was Chris Fall, a scientist with a long career spanning the federal government and academia. Burns had been asked to resign that afternoon, according to one of the people familiar with the situation...
>
> Dean Ball, a former Trump administration AI adviser, said on social media that Burns had given up valuable Anthropic stock and moved across the country to take the government position, and had been "rewarded by his country with a punch in the face." "Obviously what happened is Burns was bumped because of his association with Anthropic," Ball wrote. "A dumb but predictable own goal."
[1] https://www.detroitnews.com/story/tech/2026/04/24/white-house-pushed-out-new-ai-official-after-just-days-on-the-job/89779710007/
He forgot ... (Score:1)
He forgot to remove the "Harris/Walz" bumper sticker from his car. :-)
They hired somebody competent by accident? (Score:2)
No surprise they had to fire that person immediately. They have to maintain their standards that all members of government need to be incompetent and stupid, drug addiction, a history of sexual abuse, etc. a bonus.
Re: (Score:2)
Personally, I'll be happiest if the clown show continues until we get to the midterms. So far, so good...
Re: (Score:2)
You have a point.
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They hired opposition, who was there to oppose them from the inside. They need the opposition, but lets be honest about what actually happened.
He held his nose to collaborate with the Trump administration at significant risk of exactly this happening, because he's not the first to go through this carousel. He was clearly there as an influence peddler, not to do what was in his job description. Dario will reward him for his attempted effort through some indirect means of course, he's not going to lose any mo
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That's not how a competent administration works. But yes that is how a fascist admin works, loyalty first, us vs them.
"He was clearly there as an influence peddler, not to do what was in his job description."
The Trump admin is full of influence peddlers, they don't have a problem with that, as long as you kiss the ring. But if you come from the "enemy", you'd better be ready to go full propaganda against your old friends.
Conflict of Interest (Score:2)
See how quickly you can get rid of someone with a conflict of interest the moment that conflict goes against the powers that be? Imagine if Anthropic were Trump shills, how long would it take them to get rid of him? Years? Ever?
Seems ill thought out. (Score:4, Interesting)
Obviously we aren't expecting a merit hire from the current administration; but this seems like a weird move even by their low standards of thuggish demands for compliance and sniveling loyalists. Hegseth is having a tantrum over anthropic allegedly getting in the way of the DoD fulfiling his fantasies of masculine adequacy; so you fire the guy who left anthropic to work for you?
Isn't the whole point of treating any differences of opinion as personal insults to be dealt with regardless of their legality, while coddling loyalists regardless of their actions, to encourage people to obey you rather than others? Especially if this guy wasn't in a position to personally change Anthropic's contract with the DoD what lesson are you conveying by punishing him anyway? "We might just fuck you over because we don't like your old boss" seems like an actively counterproductive line because it essentially tells a nontrivial number of people that compliance isn't worth it because they'll be punished anyway; rather than encouraging them to turn on whoever your enemies are in order to be rewarded.
Re: Seems ill thought out. (Score:2)
You're putting more thought into it than they are.
Way too successful (Score:2)
Replaced himself with AI
Four Days (Score:2)
That's past retirement age in Internet years.
Only hires the best people! (Score:2)
And only fires YUGE LOSERS! Gimme funny! Okay, so the joke is hanging low, but I'm really surprised no one brought it up.
My unfunny take is different. Goes back some decades to when I was studying the violent anarchists in Russia before Lenin "solved" that mess. I was basically stumped by their motivations, but now I am sort of understanding them. Something like "There is no way to fix this mess, so the whole thing should be destroyed because the next thing can't be worse." So then you have to weigh Stalin
Insecure much? (Score:2)
Make a mess of your other appointments-- i.e. , clowns and self-serving yes-men in every cabinet position--leaves you vulnerable to ridicule and worse.
Well ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone stupid enough to take a job working for the trump administration almost deserves a punch in the face.
IDK, someone from academia may be better fit (Score:2)
> Anyone stupid enough to take a job working for the trump administration almost deserves a punch in the face.
Seems more like a punch in the face for someone who worked at Anthropic.
The admin seems happy with someone coming from academia who also has prior governmental experience.
To be fair, someone coming from academia seems a better choice to me.
Re: IDK, someone from academia may be better fit (Score:2)
Sure, maybe, but what a competent manager does, in any business, is make these decisions and get buy-in from key decision makers _before_ hiring the guy.
Never seen a new hire that was a bad idea? (Score:3)
> Sure, maybe, but what a competent manager does, in any business, is make these decisions and get buy-in from key decision makers _before_ hiring the guy.
Have you never seen a new hire that got past management and team reviews, and then in their first weeks turned out to be a bad idea? You never really know what you got until they've been on the job with you for a while.
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Uhh they knew this guy's work history before he started. That's the whole point of a resume.
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> Uhh they knew this guy's work history before he started. That's the whole point of a resume.
Where you work, management and team reviews don't include independent reading of the resume, independent interviews, etc? The hiring process is one thing. Working with someone is something different. The latter reveals more.
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4 days is not enough time to determine the guy isn't a good fit.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
> 4 days is not enough time to determine the guy isn't a good fit.
For an engineering job, probably. For a management job, it absolutely can be. And for a policy job too.
Re: Never seen a new hire that was a bad idea? (Score:1)
You sure do slurp that Trump micropenis hard
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But we had our AI read the resume, and it was happy with it.
Re:Never seen a new hire that was a bad idea? (Score:5, Informative)
> Have you never seen a new hire that got past management and team reviews, and then in their first weeks turned out to be a bad idea?
This doesn't seem to be the case here though. There were no "first weeks". The guy was fired as soon as the White House got wind of the hire. It doesn't appear to be an issue of competency; rather it's an issue of loyalty to Trump.
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>> Have you never seen a new hire that got past management and team reviews, and then in their first weeks turned out to be a bad idea?
> This doesn't seem to be the case here though. There were no "first weeks". The guy was fired as soon as the White House got wind of the hire. It doesn't appear to be an issue of competency; rather it's an issue of loyalty to Trump.
Being asked to resign on day four does not rule out he "did" something that first week. Nor does it rule out that someone not part of the hiring process knew of something he "did" while at Anthropic. It's not like the hiring process has some some sort of company wide or administration wide announcement that we are considering hiring this person, anyone know of any reason not to? Stuff might not come to light until there is a welcome to the company/admin announcement.
As for loyalty, Trump has quite a few
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> Being asked to resign on day four does not rule out he "did" something that first week.
True it does not, but it's rather on you to rule it "in". RTFA. Then if you've got some credible information to supplement or counter, post a link. Otherwise it's just noise.
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This seems like the kind of punch in the face that is compensated either by a court awarding you a lot of money or the guy who punched you paying you a lot before a court makes him.