Meta’s AI Team Revolts - This Is Literally a Gulag

[Palumboism]

Meta’s Applied AI team revolted, employee hijacked company stream with profanity

A new report in Wired claims: the Applied AI team has found itself on the brink of a revolt against leadership.

The drama unfolded when one employee hacked a live-stream for staff, using uncensored language, demanding that participants address one of the senior Meta AI executives with the words that he is “a bad piece of shit”.

According to Wired, this outburst of emotion reflects growing anger within a three-month-old division, in which about 6,500 engineers and product managers are responsible for supporting the company’s ambitions in AI research.

Workers say they were coerced into the group with no real choice: to join or leave. Many call themselves “conscripts”: their job is to create exercises and coding tasks to train AI models. «This is literally a Gulag» – according to one employee, relayed to Wired, underscoring the level of involvement in this process.

https://mezha.net/eng/bukvy/c790e858_meta-s_applied_ai/

Sounds like the work environment over at Meta is like Lord of the Flies right now. 

[Palumboism]

Meta's new Applied AI Engineering unit reportedly had a flat structure with ​up to 50:1 ratio of ‌individual contributors to managers.

In April, Meta raised its annual capital spending forecast to ​between $125 billion and $145 billion.

https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/zuckerberg-says-meta-made-mistakes-in-ai-workforce-shift-212324481.html

Every manager has 50 employees, all in their twenties, and at the same time you're spending $145 Billion in Cap Ex in one year.  It just sounds insane. 

[GymnJuice]

I don't doubt they're taking advantage of their younger workers, but it's hardly a gulag. If someone hates the conditions they should quit and either join a competitor or start their own company.

[Palumboism]

I don't doubt they're taking advantage of their younger workers, but it's hardly a gulag. If someone hates the conditions they should quit and either join a competitor or start their own company.

I don't know anybody who works at Meta.  I know quite a few people who used to work at Amazon, so I have a window into how that company works.

I just know that Meta made a huge and rapid shift from the Metaverse to AI.  I just wondered what the toll that takes on the people working there.  We can see the number of layoffs, but this story shows gives a view into how the company works.

FANG jobs are highly coveted, so all these employees would have no problem getting a job somewhere else.

My personal opinion is Zuckerberg is a terrible CEO because of his lack of people skills.  He just lucked out with Facebook being something people wanted.

 

[IroNat]

It used to be you trained a low-paid Indian to replace you.
Now you train AI to replace you.

[Humble Narcissist]

UBI is on its way.

[Brenda Steunbeer]

I don't get all the AI software now on offer to consumers and companies. Grok, anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, meta AI, Apple AI: they all seem very similar?
The latest version always is the best, beating the other by a few percent, untill another AI software is updated and then that temporarily is the best.

If all of them are so similar, why not just go for the cheapest?
That is, if people want to pay for a monthly subscription.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but all such companies basically sell subscriptions and ads?

I guess the Chinese might even offer their AI models for free or for very low prices?

[Griffith]

I don't get all the AI software now on offer to consumers and companies. Grok, anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, meta AI, Apple AI: they all seem very similar?
The latest version always is the best, beating the other by a few percent, untill another AI software is updated and then that temporarily is the best.

If all of them are so similar, why not just go for the cheapest?
That is, if people want to pay for a monthly subscription.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but all such companies basically sell subscriptions and ads?

I guess the Chinese might even offer their AI models for free or for very low prices?

They all have different strengths and weaknesses and some are better suited for specific tasks.

[IroNat]