As it adapts to the age of artificial intelligence, Meta is forcing many of its 78,000 employees to use the technology while preparing to lay off some of them.
As it adapts to the age of artificial intelligence, Meta is forcing many of its 78,000 employees to use the technology while preparing to lay off some of them.
Meta has notified American employees of the changes that will affect tens of thousands of them, the New York Times reports .
The company said it would track everything from what employees typed on their computers to how they moved their mouse, where they clicked, and what they saw on their screens. The goal, it said, was to collect data so that Meta’s artificial intelligence models could learn «how people actually perform everyday tasks using a computer.»
Many employees immediately spoke out against it. In comments online, they criticized such monitoring as a violation of privacy, calling it «antisocial and heartless.»
Meta is forcing its 78,000 employees to adopt AI tools and is factoring their use of the technology into their performance reviews. The company is also tracking employees’ computer activity to feed and train its AI models. Meta is also cutting jobs to offset the cost of AI; last month it announced plans to lay off 10% of its staff.
This has led to a wave of anger and anxiety, with workers awaiting news about whether they will be affected by the layoffs, which 11 current and former Meta employees said are scheduled for May 20.
Some say they no longer see Meta as a place for a long-term career. Others are already looking for new jobs or trying to hint at their desire to be fired in order to get severance pay.
According to current and former employees, Meta organized «AI Transformation Weeks» for its employees in March. The goal was to train staff on how to use tools for writing AI-based code and AI agents.
Product designers, who are responsible for the appearance of products and how users interact with them, were told to try writing code using AI, and programmers were told to use AI to design products.
Meta also implemented internal dashboards to track employee token consumption, which some have called a pressure tactic to encourage competition among colleagues.
This led to some employees creating so many AI agents that others had to implement agents to find agents and agents to evaluate other agents.
Meta is laying off about 8,000 people this month. Some employees have begun distributing layoff handouts. It has also set up at least three websites counting down to the layoffs on May 20. The headline of one of them read: «Big Beautiful Layoff,» a reference to the Domestic Policy Act of 2025, which President Trump has called «One Big Beautiful Bill.»
Meta has hinted at further changes. «We don’t really know what the optimal size of the company is going to be in the future,» CFO Susan Lee said on a call with investors last week. «I think there’s a lot of change happening right now because the capabilities of artificial intelligence are evolving so rapidly.»
