Taking Meta as an example, it seems that replacing humans with AI is not that easy.
Reuters reported that CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff in a company hall on Thursday that the pace of development of AI agents was “not accelerating” as executives had previously hoped.
Earlier this year, Meta laid off about 8,000 employees, or about 10% of the company’s workforce, and redeployed another 7,000 to various AI groups, including one called Agent Transformation, Bloomberg reported.
At this week’s conference, Zuckerberg apparently commented on these layoffs, noting that they weren’t as “clean” as they should have been. Zuckerberg added that the cuts were made because the company’s executives were “concerned that they wouldn’t be able to move fast enough to adapt” to the changing landscape of the technology industry.
The company’s leaders also appeared to say that the positive aspects of the new AI-focused corporate structure “haven’t materialized yet,” but said they believe they will see improvements from AI investments within the next three to six months. Several other investigative reports depict Meta’s months-old AI unit as a soul-crushing concentration camp, according to some of the engineers assigned to the unit.
Meta is investing heavily in AI, and is expected to spend up to $145 billion on AI infrastructure this year, Reuters reports.
TechCrunch has reached out to Meta for comment.
