Meta's new applied AI team faces internal unrest after layoffs
Meta's new Applied AI team (6,500 engineers and product managers strong) is already facing big internal drama just three months in.
Employees are frustrated by sudden job changes and too few managers, and things got heated enough that someone interrupted a livestreamed, employee-only presentation with some choice words for a senior exec.
All this comes after major layoffs and Meta's pivot from the metaverse to AI, leaving a lot of people feeling uneasy.
Employees protest tracking, Mark Zuckerberg responds
Team members say their daily tasks, like making puzzles and coding challenges for AI training, feel "soul-crushing," with some even calling themselves "draftees."
More than 1,600 employees signed a petition against a program that tracks clicks and keystrokes.
In response, Zuckerberg admitted in a memo that mistakes were made and said the company would address them.
He also defended using internal staff instead of outside contractors for AI work, saying Meta's average employees had "significantly higher" intelligence than third-party contractors, and Alexandr Wang knew the data-labeling world well.