Meta is facing growing internal unrest as employees assigned to its Applied AI division express dissatisfaction over their roles and working conditions, according to a report by Wired.
Tensions came to a head during an internal livestreamed presentation this week when an unidentified individual disrupted the event with an expletive-filled outburst directed at a senior AI executive.
The incident reportedly left presenters visibly shaken and highlighted wider frustrations within the three-month-old unit, which comprises around 6,500 engineers and product managers.
Several employees told Wired that they were transferred into the division with little or no choice, describing themselves as “draftees” who were effectively forced to either accept the reassignment or leave the company.
Their primary responsibility involves creating coding challenges and puzzles to help train Meta’s artificial intelligence models, work that some staff members have described as monotonous and demoralising.
Concerns over the programme surfaced earlier this year when Business Insider reported that many employees first learned of their reassignment through unexpected emails.
According to an internal announcement reviewed by the publication, Meta believed its AI systems still required significant improvement in performing technical tasks such as software development and therefore needed more real-world examples to enhance their capabilities.
In a leaked recording from an internal meeting, Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg defended the decision to use existing employees rather than external contractors.
He reportedly cited the expertise of Alexandr Wang, founder of Scale AI and now Meta’s Chief AI Officer, arguing that Meta employees were better positioned to provide high-quality training data than third-party workers.
The dissatisfaction extends beyond the Applied AI division. More than 1,600 employees across the company have reportedly signed a petition opposing a system that tracks clicks and keystrokes for AI training purposes.
The broader mood within the organisation has become sufficiently strained that Chief Product Officer Chris Cox recently acknowledged what he described as a “brutal” environment during a company-wide discussion.
The Applied AI team is led by Maher Saba, a long-serving Meta executive who previously held a senior role within Reality Labs, the division responsible for the company’s metaverse initiatives. The unit operates under the oversight of Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth.
Reports also indicate that the division was initially organised with unusually large management structures, with some supervisors overseeing as many as 50 employees.
In an internal memo, Zuckerberg acknowledged that recent organisational changes had caused distress among staff and conceded that mistakes had been made.
He assured employees that the company was working to address the concerns, reiterating Meta’s ambition to remain the best place for talented individuals to make a meaningful impact.
