Meta engineers compare conditions in AI division to a “gulag”

Engineers working in Meta's Applied AI division, established a few months ago, are expressing strong dissatisfaction with the internal environment. According to Wired, while the company spends billions of dollars on AI development, employees feel like “conscripts.” The severity of the situation was highlighted during a recent internal presentation when an unidentified employee took over the live stream to use insulting language toward management. This is reported by Techcrunch.com reports .

Employees of this division, consisting of approximately 6,500 engineers and product managers, describe their work as “soul-crushing.” Their primary task involves creating coding problems and puzzles to train AI models. Many employees claim they were transferred to this group against their will under a “join or quit” ultimatum. One employee called the division a “literal gulag,” while others complain about the monotony and boredom of the work.

Mark Zuckerberg explained at an internal meeting why he involved his own engineers in this work instead of external contractors. He believes that the intellectual potential of Meta employees is significantly higher than third-party services, which helps in training AI models more effectively. However, over 1,600 employees have signed a petition against the company's software that tracks their every keystroke.

The general mood at the company has deteriorated to such an extent that Meta's Chief Product Officer Chris Cox was forced to acknowledge the existence of a “brutal” environment during a meeting with staff. The Applied AI team is led by Maher Saba, former VP of the Reality Labs division, which previously spent $83 billion on the metaverse project. Currently, this new structure reports to Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth.