Black Week at Meta: 8,000 layoffs and 7,000 employees reassigned to AI

© Meta

Meta announces the reassignment of 7 000 of its employees

The era of the multiverse is dead and buried at Meta, now focusing on artificial intelligence. This Monday, May 18th, the American company announced through an internal memo the reassignment of 7 000 of its employees into four new organizations dedicated to developing new AI tools and applications. According to information from the New York Times, these four new organizations integrate workflows using AI and have fewer managers and director positions than other departments within the company. In other words, the managers of these four new organizations are AI agents designed by Meta. Janelle Gale, Meta's Human Resources Director, assures: « This restructuring will allow us to be more productive and make work more fulfilling ».

A dark week for Meta employees

The announcement of the reassignment of 7 000 employees was made this Monday, May 18th. Two days later, on Wednesday, May 20th, Meta will lay off 10 % of its workforce, approximately 8 000 workers, mainly to fund the development of artificial intelligence. Mark Zuckerberg announced investments ranging from 115 to 135 billion dollars this year, mainly for the development of new AI technologies. Meta also announced the closure of 6,000 open positions and the rollout of the program « Model Capability Initiative ». This program is designed to capture mouse movements, clicks, and keyboard inputs from employees in order to train Meta's AI models. Over 1,000 of them have signed a petition against training AI tools using their data. In short, the atmosphere is not rosy within Mark Zuckerberg's company, nor among his subcontractors.

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Source : The New York Times