Technology

One of the presenters covered their face with their hands, according to a witness. (The speaker could not be reached for comment, and the meeting’s two leaders moved on with their technical talk after asking everyone to mute, though employees commented on the stream about the “spicy” start.)

The incident, which took place on a call open to thousands of employees, reflects growing frustration inside the company’s Applied AI team, which was formed in March to support the work of AI researchers at Meta Superintelligence Labs. Three current employees tell WIRED there is widespread dissatisfaction with how Meta assembled the unit of about 6,500 engineers and product managers and the drudgework they allege they have been assigned to improve AI models. Each spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

“It's literally the gulag,” one of the employees claims. “You have zero purpose in life all of a sudden, you barely interact with anyone, you just have these tasks every week."

Another employee describes some of the tasks—generating puzzles to test how reliably AI models from Meta and other companies can solve them—as easy compared to the software development work they had been doing previously. But the new projects feel menial, and “almost all” employees seem unhappy, they say. “Most people find the work soul-crushing,” the third employee says.

Meta declined to comment for this story. Got a Tip? Are you a current or former Meta employee who wants to talk about what's happening? We'd like to hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact the reporters securely on Signal at peard33.24 and zoeschiffer.87.

Applied AI isn’t the only unit where tensions are boiling over and contributing to what workers describe as record-low morale. The company’s AI-focused restructuring, which included 10 percent of the company, or 8,000 employees, being let go last month has generated extra work and stress throughout several divisions, including data center engineering and Instagram, several current and former employees tell WIRED.

Across the company, more than 1,600 employees have signed a petition demanding that Meta stop a recently launched initiative to monitor US employees’ clicks and keystrokes to generate AI training data. (The company has scaled back the program slightly, allowing employees to pause data collection for up to 30 minutes and request specific exemptions).

During a meeting this week open to all employees at Instagram, Meta chief product officer Chris Cox addressed the “difficult” and “brutal” environment created by the “insanity of this company” in the past few months, according to a recording heard by WIRED. Cox applauded Instagram employees for launching features and serving around 2 billion users amid what he compared to “running a marathon in the middle of a hailstorm and then, like, your teammate gets replaced and then we’re recording you.”

“It’s like what the fuck,” he said, drawing laughs, before repeating himself. “It is like what the fuck.”

Cox said he needed to reckon with how he and other leaders could “get in touch with the company again” and “not be overearnest” about the power of AI. “It is neither god, nor is it the devil,” he said. “And it’s nowhere near as good as you think it is, and it is nowhere near as bad as you think it is. And it changes every week … and it doesn’t know what day of the week it is.”

In an internal memo on Friday seen by WIRED, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that recent organizational changes had caused distress across Meta. “Given the complexity of these changes, we’ve made mistakes and will almost certainly make more,” he wrote. “As we navigate this period, I’m also focused on providing as much stability going forward as possible.”

Zuckerberg reiterated a vow to not carry out additional mass layoffs this year. He introduced a plan to limit the number of employees per manager, which on some teams, such as Applied AI, had deliberately ballooned to a ratio of 50 to one. Budgets for team events would increase, he said, and a large hackathon planned for next month could also help bring the company together. By the end of the year, employees in many locations would have assigned desks again, the CEO wrote. “Talented People”

Zuckerberg’s memo also addressed the allegedly dismal situation in Applied AI directly, referring to the unit by its acronym. He suggested the team was a waypoint, not a destination. “Work like AAI is critical to advancing our models and it lets very talented people contribute to those efforts while we create other roles they can contribute to around Meta over the coming months as well,” he wrote.

Engineers selected for the unit have no choice but to join or leave the company, an unusual requirement for highly valued technical employees in Silicon Valley. That’s led some members of Applied AI to describe themselves as “draftees.”

The organization has grown in batches since early April. “It’s crazy to watch people experience the shock of it as each wave comes in,” an early member of Applied AI says.

Some employees are being asked to finish two tasks per week. These involve generating complex software coding problems to help AI scientists better train and evaluate the performance of the latest frontier models. Some of the work is meant to help develop AI agents that generate software or other outputs.

One worker describes the assignment as “mechanical and not creative,” and certainly “not using their full skill set and knowledge.” They feel they were hired to develop social media apps for billions of people, but now find themselves assembling data for hundreds of AI scientists to feed to computer chips.

Meta released pioneering open-weight AI models three years ago, but has had mixed results with subsequent releases. Applied AI is among several expensive initiatives Zuckerberg has spun up in hopes that the company can better compete in the growing market for AI services.

Zuckerberg noted in his memo that, unlike some other AI labs, “automating work” was not Meta’s primary focus. “The products we’ll build will range from much more personalized Instagram and Facebook experiences and glasses that help you throughout the day to better tools for small businesses to thrive and create jobs, and personal superintelligence agents that understand your goals and work 24/7 on your behalf to help in the ways you want,” he wrote.

To get there, he said, “Meta’s north star is to be the best place for the most talented people in the world to make an impact.”