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Why this matters: Governments have been hopping on the AI hype train for a while now. The US government is notoriously bad at launching tech projects. Remember the Affordable Care Act website? It is now launching a LLM and early indications suggest that the tool is rushed.
Food and Drug Administration officially launched “Elsa,” an artificial intelligence platform that will help staff work more efficiently. Internal critics, however, claim that the rollout was too rapid and that the tool is not impressive in its current form.
According to the agency, this release was a step towards modernization. Elsa, built on Amazon’s GovCloud platform and powered by Amazon’s secure technology, analyzes internal data to generate summaries, drafts email, and helps with document reviews. Marty Makary praised FDA developers for completing “ahead of schedule and under budget,” and hailed the administration as the leader in federal agencies using artificial intelligence. Makary said. “Today’s rollout of Elsa is ahead of schedule and under budget, thanks to the collaboration of our in-house experts across the centers.”
The FDA announced that Elsa is already handling tasks such as comparing clinical trial protocol and flagging anomalies within inspection reports. The FDA claims that staff have used Elsa thousands of times since testing began in early January.
NBC News reports employees who have used Elsa have described it as buggy and barely able able to perform simple tasks. One internal email stated that the system “couldn’t do basic things like copy and paste or open hyperlinks.”
some staff expressed frustration over the agency’s aggressive deadline. Stat News sources told Stat News the public announcement blindsided the internal team managing Elsa. This forced them to scramble to finalize details that management had not communicated to the staff. One person called “premature,” the reveal, saying that the launch felt like a PR stunt rather than a practical landmark. Makary admitted that the project will not be perfect when it launches
. In an interview Stat, he said that Elsa would evolve through user feedback and incremental improvements. He said
“This is a journey,” . “Elsa today is going to be different than Elsa in six months.”
Some staff still question why the FDA approved a public debut of the tool before it passed basic usability testing. The timing raised questions about whether internal transparency was sacrificed for a political victory, especially since the agency wants to appear forward-looking in light of public scrutiny on its regulatory pace.
Elsa only trains FDA employees. It does not use data from regulated companies. Officials claim they will monitor the use of Elsa to prevent bias and misinformation. However, critics claim that early communications about the rollout were vague or lacking in oversight mechanisms.
Elsa’s success or failure will depend on the next steps and how well the agency listens its employees. The road ahead is anything but certain, given the government’s history of missteps in tech rollouts.
