'Most People Find The Work Soul-Crushing': Meta Applied AI Team Employees Revolt Against Data-Training Work
· Free Press Journal
Meta's three-month-old Applied AI team, a 6,500-person group of engineers and product managers assembled to support the company's AI research ambitions is reportedly fracturing from within, with employees describing their situation in startling terms.
An all-hands meeting that went off the rails
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The tension boiled over during a livestreamed internal presentation this week, when an attendee hijacked the session with an expletive-filled outburst, urging thousands of watching colleagues to tell a senior Meta AI executive that he was 'a piece of shit.' A presenter reportedly covered their face in response. The incident, first reported by Wired, reflects simmering frustration inside the unit, which employees say they were drafted into with little choice - join or quit.
Meta employees speak out
The discontent isn't just about the manner of reassignment. Multiple current employees, speaking anonymously to Wired, described their new work as menial and demoralising. One called the situation 'literally the gulag,' adding they had 'zero purpose in life all of a sudden' and just have 'tasks every week.' Another said 'most people find the work soul-crushing' and that 'almost all' colleagues appear unhappy.
'Everyone Is Unhappy': Employees React As Meta Gears Up To Axe 8,000 Jobs On May 20The tasks themselves, largely generating puzzles and coding problems to train and evaluate AI models, feel like a steep downgrade for engineers who previously held product-facing roles.
Why Meta did this
In a leaked audio recording from an April internal meeting, CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained the rationale. Meta believed its own engineers had 'significantly higher' intelligence than third-party contractors, making them better suited for AI training data work. The unit reports to CTO Andrew Bosworth and is led by Maher Saba, a 12-year Meta veteran formerly of Reality Labs.
Meta Staff Revolt With Flyers Ahead of 8,000 Job Cuts; AI Surveillance Tools Being CriticisedZuckerberg acknowledges the fallout
The backlash has grown wide enough that Zuckerberg addressed it directly. In an internal memo, he acknowledged that recent changes had 'caused distress' and admitted the company had made mistakes it planned to fix, while reiterating that Meta's goal was to be 'the best place for the most talented people in the world to make an impact.'
Separately, more than 1,600 Meta employees have signed a petition protesting a program that monitors their keystrokes for AI training data.