Simmering tensions over a massive corporate restructuring recently caused a routine meeting for Meta’s Applied AI division to spiral into a profanity-filled chaos. An employee hijacked the live audio to vent about working conditions, calling a top executive “a piece of shit” and stating they were tired of “being the company’s bitch”.
The shocking outburst was the boiling point of an internal “AI rebellion” stemming from the following factors:
- Mass Reassignments: In March 2026, Meta created the Applied AI division, reassigning approximately 6,500 engineers and product managers from product development to AI evaluation tasks (such as generating riddles and coding puzzles to test model reliability). Employees have described this work as “soul-crushing” and “literally the gulag”.
- Employee Surveillance: Over 1,600 Meta employees signed an internal petition opposing a company program (referred to as the Model Capability Initiative) that monitors worker mouse clicks, keystrokes, and screen activity to train AI agents. Workers fear they are being monitored to generate data that will ultimately replace their own jobs.
- Leadership Response: Following recent layoffs, leaders like CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Product Officer Chris Cox acknowledged the turmoil, conceding that the company made mistakes during the abrupt transition.
