Meta's AI Unit Faces Employee Revolt, Engineers Call It 'Soul-Crushing Gulag'
Meta's three-month-old Applied AI unit, comprising about 6,500 engineers and product managers, is reportedly on the verge of revolt, with employees describing the work as monotonous and forced, leading to a protest and leaked internal tensions.
According to a report from Wired, Meta's Applied AI team is close to rebellion. The unit was created three months ago and brings together roughly 6,500 engineers and product managers tasked with supporting the company's AI research ambitions.
Employees claim they had no choice but to join the group or leave the company. Many refer to themselves as "draftees." Their assigned work involves generating puzzles and coding problems to train AI models. One employee told Wired, "It's literally the gulag. Most people find the work soul-crushing."
The situation escalated this week when a hijacker disrupted a livestreamed, employee-only presentation with an expletive-laden outburst, 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.
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" during a call with employees this week.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly addressed the situation in an internal memo on Friday, acknowledging that recent changes had "caused distress" and admitting the company had made mistakes that it plans to address. He added that "Meta's north star is to be the best place for the most talented people in the world to make an impact."
The Applied AI team is led by Maher Saba, formerly a vice president in Meta's Reality Labs division, which burned through $83 billion on the metaverse before Meta shifted focus to AI. The new organization reports to Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth. Initially, the unit was structured so that up to 50 employees reported to one manager.
