GoKawiilIn Brief
Anyone who works at Meta or knows anyone who works at Meta will tell you the same thing: it is not a happy place, particularly given the seemingly endless layoffs the company has executed over the last few years — cuts that have only accelerated as the company funnels billions into AI.
Now, a new report in Wired suggests the company’s Applied AI team is on the verge of revolt.
The drama kicked off when someone hijacked a livestreamed, employee-only presentation this week with an expletive-laden meltdown, demanding that attendees tell a senior Meta AI executive that he was “a piece of sh_t.” One presenter reportedly covered their face with their hands.
That outburst, Wired reports, reflects simmering rage inside the three-month-old unit of roughly 6,500 engineers and product managers who have been tasked with supporting the company’s AI research ambitions.
Employees describe being forced into the group with no real choice: join or quit. Many call themselves “draftees.” Their assigned work? Generating puzzles and coding problems to train AI models. “It’s literally the gulag,” one employee told Wired. “Most people find the work soul-crushing,” said another.
Meanwhile, more than 1,600 Meta employees across the company have signed a petition protesting a program that monitors their clicks and keystrokes for AI training data. Even Meta’s chief product officer, Chris Cox, called the current environment “brutal” in a call with employees this week.
TechCrunch has reached out to Meta for comment.
The Applied AI team is led by Maher Saba, who was previously a vice president in Meta’s Reality Labs division, according to earlier reports. The new organization reports up to Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth.
Originally, it was structured in such a way that up to 50 employees reported to one manager.
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