A new unit at Meta devoted to artificial intelligence is turning into real-world hell for employees, according to a new report.
At a live-streamed meeting earlier this month reported by Wired, a disgruntled person interrupted speakers to go on an expletive-filled tirade about “being the company’s b—h,” raving that an unnamed Meta AI exec should be told, “he’s a piece of s–t.”
One of the presenters reportedly covered their face with their hands before the meeting’s leaders told everyone to hit the mute button, though rank-and-file workers continued to make comments about it, Wired reported.
The incident highlights growing frustration inside Meta’s Applied AI team, which was formed in March to support the work of AI researchers at Meta Superintelligence Labs – and comes as anxiety has lingered after a brutal round of layoffs targeting 8,000 employees last month.
Wired reported widespread dissatisfaction with how Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta assembled the unit of about 6,500 engineers and product managers, finding employees are fed up with the drudge work they say is required of them to improve AI models.
“It’s literally the gulag,” an unnamed worker told Wired. “You have zero purpose in life all of a sudden, you barely interact with anyone, you just have these tasks every week.”
The tasks reportedly include creating puzzles to test the reliability of Meta and others’ AI models. Meta workers called the work easy compared to the software development they previously did, but complained that it’s menial and say “almost all” employees seem unhappy.
“Most people find the work soul-crushing,” a second employee was quoted as saying.
Another worker called their job “mechanical and not creative,” complaining they’re “not using their full skill set and knowledge.”
Instead of developing social media apps for billions of people, they’ve found themselves slogging through data to prepare it for hundreds of AI scientists to feed to computer chips.
In another sign of employee discontent, more than 1,600 workers reportedly signed a petition calling on Meta stop a recent initiative to monitor US employees’ keyboard and mouse activity in order to generate AI training data.
Meta chief product officer Chris Cox addressed the “difficult” and “brutal” conditions created by the “insanity of this company” during a recent meeting for Instagram employees, according to Wired. He cheered workers’ efforts, which he compared to “running a marathon in the middle of a hailstorm and then, like, your teammate gets replaced and then we’re recording you.”
“It’s like what the f–k,” he reportedly said twice, drawing snickers.
Cox said he and other leaders needed to “get in touch with the company again” and “not be overearnest” about the power of AI, according to Wired.
“It is neither god, nor is it the devil,” he was quoted as saying. “And it’s nowhere near as good as you think it is, and it is nowhere near as bad as you think it is. And it changes every week … and it doesn’t know what day of the week it is.”
Zuckerberg reportedly acknowledged that recent organizational changes had ruffled feathers across the company.
“Given the complexity of these changes, we’ve made mistakes and will almost certainly make more,” he wrote in an internal memo this month, according to Wired. “As we navigate this period, I’m also focused on providing as much stability going forward as possible.”
He reportedly said he would not carry out additional mass layoffs this year, adding he would limit the number of employees per manager. On teams including Applied AI, there were cases of one manager overseeing 50 workers.
Zuckerberg also sought to foster goodwill by saying he would increase budgets for team events.
His memo addressed the situation at the Applied AI team, using the division’s acronym, too.
“Work like [Applied AI] is critical to advancing our models and it lets very talented people contribute to those efforts while we create other roles they can contribute to around Meta over the coming months as well,” he wrote, according to Wired.
Meta declined to comment to Wired and did not immediately respond to a Post request for comment.