A new report from Wired paints a stark picture of life inside Meta’s three-month-old Applied AI unit, describing a workforce of roughly 6,500 engineers and product managers who feel they have been dragooned into the group against their will. The report details a recent employee-only livestream that was hijacked by a worker who unleashed an expletive-laden tirade, demanding attendees tell a senior Meta AI executive that he was “a piece of sh_t.” One presenter reportedly covered their face with their hands.
The outburst, Wired reports, reflects simmering rage inside the unit, which has been tasked with supporting Meta’s AI research ambitions. Employees describe being given a stark choice: join the new team or quit. Many refer to themselves as “draftees.” Their assigned work? Generating puzzles and coding problems to train AI models.
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‘It’s literally the gulag’
“It’s literally the gulag,” one employee told Wired. “Most people find the work soul-crushing,” said another. The report comes as Meta has executed waves of layoffs over the last several years, cutting thousands of roles while funneling billions of dollars into artificial intelligence infrastructure.
According to earlier reporting, the Applied AI team is led by Maher Saba, a former vice president in Meta’s Reality Labs division — the unit that burned through $83 billion on the metaverse before the company shifted focus to AI. The new organization reports up to Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth. At its inception, the team was structured so that up to 50 employees reported to a single manager.
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Wider discontent across the company
The unrest is not confined to the Applied AI unit. More than 1,600 Meta employees across the company have signed a petition protesting a program that monitors their clicks and keystrokes for AI training data. Even Meta’s chief product officer, Chris Cox, called the current environment “brutal” in a call with employees this week, according to the report.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly addressed the situation in an internal memo on Friday, acknowledging that recent changes had “caused distress” and admitting the company had made mistakes that it plans to address. According to Wired, he added that “Meta’s north star is to be the best place for the most talented people in the world to make an impact.”
TechCrunch has reached out to Meta for comment. The company has not yet responded publicly to the Wired report.
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