“Tell him he’s a piece of shit”: The Meta’s new AI module is a hot mess

Someone interrupted A The live presentation was broadcast to employees only on dead earlier this week with an expletive-filled outburst about “being the company whore,” according to a recording heard by WIRED. The individual then asked the people leading the call to write to a specific person Meta artificial intelligence CEO and “tell him he’s a piece of shit.”

One witness said that one of the broadcasters covered his face with his hands. (We were unable to reach the speaker for comment, and the two meeting leaders continued their technical talk after asking everyone to be quiet, despite staff commenting on the broadcast about the “hot” start.)

The incident, which occurred during a town hall call to thousands of employees, reflects growing frustration within the company’s Applied AI team, which was formed in March to support the work of the company’s AI researchers. Superintelligence laboratories. Three current employees told WIRED that there is widespread dissatisfaction with how Meta has assembled the unit of about 6,500 engineers and product managers and the hard work they claim they are assigned to improve AI models. Each of them spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

“It’s literally a gulag,” claims one employee. “You suddenly have zero purpose in life, you barely interact with anyone, you only have these tasks every week.”

Another employee describes some tasks — such as creating puzzles to test the reliability of AI models from Meta and other companies — as easy compared to the software development work they used to do. But they say the new projects seem menial, and “almost all” the employees seem unhappy. “Most people find work soul-crushing,” says the third employee.

Meta declined to comment for this story.

Applied AI is not the only unit where tensions are rising and contributing to what workers describe Record low morale. AI-focused corporate restructuring, which involved 10% of the company, or 8,000 employees, Being left behind The past month has generated more work and stress in several departments, including data center engineering and Instagram, several current and former employees told WIRED.

Across the company, more than 1,600 employees have signed a petition calling on Meta to stop a recently launched initiative To monitor US employees’ clicks and keystrokes To generate artificial intelligence training data. (The company has scaled back the program slightly, allowing employees to pause data collection for up to 30 minutes and request specific exemptions.)

During a meeting this week open to all employees at Instagram, Chris Cox, Meta’s chief product officer, addressed the “challenging” and “brutal” environment that “the craziness of this company” has created in the past few months, according to a recording heard by WIRED. Cox praised Instagram employees for launching the features and serving about 2 billion users amid what he compared to “running a marathon in the middle of a hailstorm and then your teammate gets replaced and then we sign you up.”

“It’s like a curse,” he said with a laugh before repeating his words. “It’s like what the fuck.”

Cox said he needed to think about how he and other leaders could “reconnect with the company” and “not get too serious” about the power of AI. He said: “He is not God, nor is he Satan.” “And it’s not as good as you think, and it’s not as bad as you think. And it changes every week…and he doesn’t know what day of the week it is.”