Inform Him He’s Useless: Meta’s New AI Division is a Complete Disaster

An interruption occurred during a livestreamed, employee-only presentation at Meta earlier this week, featuring an expletive-laden outburst about “being the company’s bitch,” as reported by WIRED from a recording. The individual urged the call leaders to message a specific Meta AI executive and “tell him that he’s a piece of shit.”

One of the speakers reportedly covered their face in disbelief, according to a witness. (The speaker was unavailable for comment, and after asking everyone to mute, the meeting leaders continued their technical discussion, while employees reacted to the “spicy” start in the stream.)

This incident, occurring on a call accessible to thousands of employees, highlights mounting frustration within the company’s Applied AI team, which was established in March to bolster the efforts of AI researchers at Meta Superintelligence Labs. Three current employees informed WIRED of widespread dissatisfaction regarding how Meta formed the unit of approximately 6,500 engineers and product managers, and the monotonous tasks they allege have been assigned to enhance AI models. Each spoke on the condition of anonymity due to lack of authorization to speak with the media.

“It’s essentially a gulag,” claimed one employee. “You suddenly feel devoid of purpose, rarely interacting with others, just completing these tasks weekly.”

Another employee described tasks such as generating puzzles to test AI models from Meta and other companies as straightforward compared to previous software development roles. However, these new projects feel trivial and “almost all” employees reportedly seem dissatisfied. “Most find the work soul-crushing,” remarked the third employee.

Meta opted not to comment for this piece.

Applied AI is not the sole team experiencing escalating tensions that contribute to what employees describe as unprecedented low morale. A recent AI-driven restructuring, which saw 10 percent of the workforce, or 8,000 employees, laid off last month, has resulted in increased workload and stress across various divisions, including data center engineering and Instagram, as indicated by several current and former employees to WIRED.

Throughout the company, more than 1,600 employees have signed a petition requesting Meta halt a new initiative to monitor US employees’ clicks and keystrokes for AI training data purposes. (The company has slightly moderated the program, enabling employees to pause data collection for up to 30 minutes and request specific exceptions).

In a meeting this week open to all employees at Instagram, Meta chief product officer Chris Cox discussed the “challenging” and “brutal” atmosphere shaped by the “insanity of this company” in recent months, according to a recording accessed by WIRED. Cox commended Instagram employees for launching new features and serving around 2 billion users amidst what he likened to “running a marathon in a hailstorm and then, as if that weren’t enough, your teammate gets replaced just as you’re being recorded.”

“It’s like what the hell,” he stated, eliciting laughs, before reiterating himself. “It is like what the hell.”

Cox acknowledged the need to address how he and other leaders could “reconnect with the company” and “not be overly earnest” regarding the capabilities of AI. “It is neither god, nor is it the devil,” he clarified. “It is not as excellent as you presume it is, nor as terrible as you might imagine. It evolves weekly… and it doesn’t know what day of the week it is.”