How Meta's Plan To Replace Workers With AI Agents Fell Apart (reuters.com) 56
Reuters reports that Meta explored shrinking some teams by as much as 60% as part of an "AI native" restructuring plan that would shift much of employees' day-to-day work to AI agents and smaller teams of human "builders." But the effort quickly ran into employee revolt and disappointing productivity gains, leading Zuckerberg to scrap a planned second wave of cuts after Meta laid off 10% of its workforce in May. From the report: In January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his top lieutenants gathered for their annual leadership retreat at his Hawaii compound. There they hatched a radical plan to reimagine work at the social-media giant in the age of artificial intelligence. Code-named Project OT -- short for Organization Transformation -- the plan envisioned an "AI native" future for the owner of Facebook and Instagram. AI would take over much of the daily work performed by thousands of human employees. Virtual workers would be overseen inside Meta by smaller, "talent-dense" cadres of human staffers, according to one internal planning document reviewed by Reuters and three people familiar with the project.
In scenario-planning exercises, two of these people said, executives explored slashing the size of many teams across Meta by as much as 60%. Some employees would be offered roles in new units, while others would be laid off as part of a culling that one human-resources executive projected would be as big as or bigger than the company's cuts of around 25% three years ago, according to another internal document. The restructuring would be carried out in two "waves," beginning with a first purge in May and followed by another shake-up in November, internal planning documents seen by Reuters showed. Layoffs would be supplemented with the closing of open positions and pushing people out who Meta believed were poor performers. These and other details of the plan, including the scale of the restructuring, haven't been previously reported. AI would take over much of the daily work performed by thousands of human employees. Virtual workers would be overseen inside Meta by smaller, "talent-dense" cadres of human staffers.
But on the night of May 19, just hours before the first layoff wave, Zuckerberg blinked. Meta laid off 10% of its employees the next day, but it called off planning for the November cuts, according to one internal document reviewed by Reuters. By then, Meta employees were in open revolt, convinced that the company's AI transformation initiatives were partly aimed at replacing them. Internal data was also suggesting that autonomous AI "agent" technology at the heart of the strategy was failing to deliver hoped-for productivity gains. Some investors were questioning what Meta had to show for its gargantuan spending on AI. This article reveals for the first time the rapid pace of the cuts Meta was considering, the thinking behind the plans and how they quickly unraveled. Based on scores of internal documents, posts and recordings reviewed by Reuters, as well as conversations with more than 20 people with knowledge of Meta's inner workings, the reporting shows how the social-media giant attempted to position itself at the forefront of an AI-driven workplace overhaul, only to stumble in the execution.
In scenario-planning exercises, two of these people said, executives explored slashing the size of many teams across Meta by as much as 60%. Some employees would be offered roles in new units, while others would be laid off as part of a culling that one human-resources executive projected would be as big as or bigger than the company's cuts of around 25% three years ago, according to another internal document. The restructuring would be carried out in two "waves," beginning with a first purge in May and followed by another shake-up in November, internal planning documents seen by Reuters showed. Layoffs would be supplemented with the closing of open positions and pushing people out who Meta believed were poor performers. These and other details of the plan, including the scale of the restructuring, haven't been previously reported. AI would take over much of the daily work performed by thousands of human employees. Virtual workers would be overseen inside Meta by smaller, "talent-dense" cadres of human staffers.
But on the night of May 19, just hours before the first layoff wave, Zuckerberg blinked. Meta laid off 10% of its employees the next day, but it called off planning for the November cuts, according to one internal document reviewed by Reuters. By then, Meta employees were in open revolt, convinced that the company's AI transformation initiatives were partly aimed at replacing them. Internal data was also suggesting that autonomous AI "agent" technology at the heart of the strategy was failing to deliver hoped-for productivity gains. Some investors were questioning what Meta had to show for its gargantuan spending on AI. This article reveals for the first time the rapid pace of the cuts Meta was considering, the thinking behind the plans and how they quickly unraveled. Based on scores of internal documents, posts and recordings reviewed by Reuters, as well as conversations with more than 20 people with knowledge of Meta's inner workings, the reporting shows how the social-media giant attempted to position itself at the forefront of an AI-driven workplace overhaul, only to stumble in the execution.
Meta is a Nazi company. (Score:4, Informative)
Meta is a Nazi company that banned people for posting #NeverAgain and links to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (the British government's official Holocaust Memorial Day organizing office and remembrance agency).
It's absolutely no surprise that a Nazi company run by Nazi Zuck would do things like this article describes either.
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Re: Meta is a Nazi company. (Score:5, Informative)
Facebook was founded to gather information about women to make it easier to trick them into having sex. So, yeah, kinda? The mission is abuse, but that tracks.
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My primary content on Feceboot was 1) opposing child rapists and 2) opposing white supremacists. They kicked me off without explanation. I choose to take this to mean that they kicked me off because they support 1) child rape and 2) white supremacy.
It might be wrong, but it matches my experience, and they will never disagree... exactly like how Trump never sues anyone who points out that he raped kids.
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They kicked me off without explanation.
Do you have any more info about how they "kicked you off"? I only ever used the website (never the app) and one day after trying to back up some photos, the site logged me out and refused access, saying my device was "unrecognised." I had the correct password, the site just refused to accept it unless I gave them more PII. (from memory, it was a phone number they wanted to unlock the account) An old Windows laptop, presumably with some magic cookie, still worked. If I was to read into the situation, I would
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I used to enjoy outing scammers on IG. I was even so naive as to think I was in some small way doing the platform a service by sticking a red flag on its bad actors. Whoops, guess what, folks? Scammers drive engagement and that's all these platforms care about. So I started getting progressively longer mutings after every post or comment I'd make, regardless of how tame
Re: Meta is a Nazi company. (Score:2)
You realise Zuckerberg is jewish, right?
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Most current Jew population on the planet are Nazis, you realize that? Right?
Oh, you want to nitpick about the fact that the "National Socialist Party of Germany" does no longer exist?
Nazi is a neologism for: racist, fascist ... get over it.
Re: Meta is a Nazi company. (Score:2)
Ignorant prick. Is this the crap you tell your sister in bed at night?
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No, my sister lives on the other side of the planet.
No idea what my sister has to do with your bullshit.
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Surprised (Score:2)
As expected (Score:5, Insightful)
Exciting new (immature) tech is introduced.
Hypemongers and lying salesweasels make exaggerated claims.
Clueless managers force it to be widely implemented, even though workers are skeptical.
Chaos ensues.
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Well put MpVpRb. Probably the best people will just leave cause they know they can get a new job where they won't have to compete against a machine.
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Probably the best people will just leave cause they know they can get a new job where they won't have to compete against a machine.
The company has already proven they are hostile to their own workers. Any worker who is not actively seeking a better job is, by definition stupid and/or desperate. Because only stupid/desperate people would work for an employer that actively hates its own workers.
I hope they find better jobs soon, and learn an important lesson about what happens when you accept a cheque from the bad guys.
Does Zuck know how to do anything? (Score:5, Interesting)
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He does a pretty good job to start to open AI after OpenAI failed at that. Meta also created quite a few useful open source tools.
Their services are all crap.
That they would now likely pull back and convert to proprietary closed tools if they could.
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> Does Zuck know how to do anything? I mean, anything other than monetizing the privacy of children?
Yes. Monetizing the privacy of adults.
AI is going to change the world (Score:2)
Better to fire all the "lieutenants" who agreed (Score:2)
How can Zuck be a huge nerd and not see that he is writing the standard apocalyptic story line IRL?
How can he have human intelligence and not see that this is a catastrophically bad idea?
Money, baby
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"Money" in more ways than one. Certainly having money helps a lot. But there's also a massive element of self-selection. People with a solid connection to and understanding of reality will understand that being a billionaire isn't very fair. They might not understand things like the huge amounts of structural violence necessary for it, but they will at least understand that there's something seriously wrong with some people having more money than you need to be spending in a thousand lifetimes, whilst billions of people struggle in poverty. These people will stop prioritising self-enrichment long before they become billionaires. It's only the bastard type who become billionaires in the first place.
This guy gets it. "billionaire" is a mental illness. Such people shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a corporate boardroom or anyones PII. They should be in a secure facility, for their own safety and the safety of the community.
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I get the feeling that Zuck is in a similar boat to Richard Dawkins and Kent Overstreet, who have gone off the deep end and believe they have LLMs which are effectively equivalent to human companionship.
Remember Zuck celebrated that people could have AI "friends" and employees could talk to AI impersonations of their management and it would be just as good as actually getting to talk to management.
Nothing quite as publicly really off the deep end as Overstreet and Dawkins (who both seem to have decided that
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How many years has Zuck trained his people to respond to him in a positive fashion and not to counterdict any of his ideas?
Of course the AI flattering systems would seem like a perfect replacement for his labor co– I mean, workers; it tells him what he wants to hear.
Re: Better to fire all the "lieutenants" who agree (Score:3)
At least Dawkins has the excuse of being 85, time has caught up with him and perhaps he isnt firing on all cylinders any more. Zuck is barely middle aged and has no such excuse.
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The AI tools respond the way TechBrahs have designed it to, flattering their egos and building up their self images so yeah, seems like it's ready for prime time.
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I wrote this about the hedge fund collapse, a few days ago:
A self-important arsehole sees the $(field of endeavour/profit) and thinks he can have it all, the golden age will never end, and his immense wealth is proof of his righteous power and magnificence. Doubtless, this was compounded by $(name of arsehole) hiring
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How can Zuck be a huge nerd and not see that he is writing the standard apocalyptic story line IRL?
How can he have human intelligence and not see that this is a catastrophically bad idea?
>
Enough $$$$ to buy his own island (looks like he gets to write it off as a corporate expense too, what with having company retreats there) and a jet to take him there if/when SHTF. He's probably got a bunker over in NZ too, and I reckon a few more scattered around so that he's no more than a few hours from the closest.
It reminds me of John Henry (Score:3, Interesting)
They're going to keep trying this and they're going to gradually improve it to the point where they can automate some tasks and where they can drastically improve performance. Also AI is going to take people who normally could not compete with you for jobs and provide them with a crutch that lets them compete. That will drastically increase the number of people you have to compete with in the job market.
This is what's driving me nuts about America we completely lack any sense of nuance or complexity. Either the AI job apocalypse takes all of our jobs and we are all broke and homeless or it's nothing to worry about carry on.
Instead what is likely to happen is that we're going to hit a tipping point where automation hollows out the middle class and we don't have enough people with disposable income to drive a capitalist economy causing a collapse into tax base and a general spiral into abject poverty for 95% of the population.
Long-term if the technology works out for the Epstein class they will replace everyone except a handful of engineers and a handful of thugs to keep the engineers in line. There's a well understood process for doing that used by guys like Vladimir Putin and Kim jong-un. It's a more advanced version of feudalism. What the cool kids called techno feudalism.
But short-term we already have a major crisis on our hands. The only people with significant disposable income in the US economy are the baby boomers and they are blowing through all that money on our healthcare system and just living their retirements and making it to 80 or 90 years old because of various drug cocktails. Current estimates are that only about 30% of the wealth held by the baby boomers will be passed on and most of that will go to a handful of individuals this proportionately.
So right off the bat in about 5 or 10 years we are not going to have the disposable income needed to keep our economy functional without major systemic changes we are not willing to do. Basically some form of socialism and wealth redistribution.
Instead it seems we're going to pretend they'll be magic future jobs that nobody can describe but somehow save us. But I don't see how we get there when virtually all of the energy on new tech in our society is being spent automating jobs away not creating new things. Literally trillions of dollars are being spent to free the Epstein class from the shackles of capitalism and having to sell their products to us and employ us.
It's not a doomsday scenario it's not cool like that. It's a gradual wearing down and breaking down of the social order and a return to the worst kind of societies where everything is built around glorifying and exalting a handful of kings and queens.
Re:It reminds me of John Henry (Score:5, Interesting)
"Long-term if the technology works out for the Epstein class they will replace everyone except a handful of engineers and a handful of thugs to keep the engineers in line. There's a well understood process for doing that used by guys like Vladimir Putin and Kim jong-un. It's a more advanced version of feudalism. "
It is what is known an Technocracy back in 1930s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy). The argument was that Democracy was failing and it was failing because people were stupid. What the followers claimed was needed was technocrats who would take over governance and make all the decisions because they were smart and regular folks were dumb. At least in the U.S., FDR came along and wiped the slate clean of those yokels.
Today, we have Silicon Valley and its goomers (Ray Kurzweil, Marc Andreessen, Elmo, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, etc.) arguing the same thing. The outgoing face is the "Singularity" where they've married Technocracy with their fevered dream of living forever in silicon, regardless of how they must trash the planet to get there.
And el Bunko is speeding them on their journey. Jettisoning immigrants (legal or illegal) is already hollowing out the tax base because we no longer tax capital. We tax people. Less people, less taxes. Politico has a cover story about how SS is headed for a 20+% haircut for the blue-haired and that no Republican will do a damn thing about it because their dumbass belief that taxing the wealthy and capital in general kills jobs. We've been lowering taxes on the wealthy and capital since Reagan. Do we have a Workers' Paradise yet? Are we fucking tired of winning yet?
The Technocracy dimbulbs don't care about the regular proles; The Technocracy advocates are merely the technoweenie moral equivalents of el Bunko. They aim to remove regular folks from voting their representatives, much like el Bunko. They figure they will be the ones making ALL the decisions. So they are essentially Fascists, and we should treat them accordingly.
The rest of your post is spot on. The Epstein class and the Silicon Valley goomers have every intention of replacing Democracy with their demented vision. It is as though Nazi Germany never happened for these bastards.
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Politico has a cover story about how SS is headed for a 20+% haircut for the blue-haired and that no Republican will do a damn thing about it because their dumbass belief that taxing the wealthy and capital in general kills jobs.
If your characterization of their story is accurate, then they are willful contributors to the problem, because Republicans don't actually believe any of that shit. They just keep saying it because their voters keep buying it. Every time the Republicans get the reins they ride the horse straight off a cliff, and those dumbfucks never learn and vote for them anyway because they did as told and ignored the evidence of their own senses.
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Eloi, Minions (small number of required techs), and morlocks (Katie bar thuh door!).
Boomer here... (Score:2)
Mod parent up.
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Not a dupe Post (Score:2)
AI Editors now !
"AI would take over much of the daily work performed by thousands of human employees. Virtual workers would be overseen inside Meta by smaller, "talent-dense" cadres of human staffers."
What happened to pilot testing (Score:2)
You would think that a company as big as Meta would at least pilot test stupid ideas before rolling it out to the whole company. But Zuck is way to smart for that
WTF ever happened to pilot programs?! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like all of corporate America and industry is in "Bet the farm mode". Hey, let's radically shift the entire company's structure and hierarchy in a year based on an interview I saw another CEO give on YouTube last week.
I can sort of explain this away for non-tech companies like media companies but tech companies themselves should have a basic understanding of engineering principles (or one would think). Select a team or form a team with the dev principles you want and run them for a few months and see what happens. Then use what they learned to extrapolate across the whole company. But this kind of logic is something you'd find with cargo cultists...
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Whatever happened to Greenfield projects? You've got a pretty good idea that your employees will push back. And perhaps sabotage the program. Start from scratch somewhere else.
Re:WTF ever happened to pilot programs?! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like all of corporate America and industry is in "Bet the farm mode".
Pilot programs are for normal companies. This is Silicon Valley. Move fast, break things, then have your minions arrange the flaming wreck into an sculpture that you can declare as a success to your venture capitalist overlords.
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It's now axiomatic that techbros move fast and break things.
They're so sure their ideas are new and superior they leap and never look.
You don't test with existing teams (Score:2)
You use a new project and setup that team as AI first.
Starting with layoffs first only makes sense in a simulation as a test (where the idea fails and you shelve it).
There is no toe-dipping with Meta. If it has a fuse, they just light it up.
Pathetic. (Score:2)
Put in the work to do things right or don't fucking bother.
Disappointing productivity gains? (Score:2)