Meta's newly formed Applied AI team of 6,500 engineers is in revolt after being forcibly reassigned to generate training data for AI models—work employees describe as soul-crushing. The company chose internal staff over outside contractors, betting they possess higher intelligence, but the move has sparked widespread discontent, petition signings, and at least one public outburst during a company presentation. The backlash threatens Meta's ability to gather the data it needs to improve its AI models' technical capabilities.
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Meta's three-month-old Applied AI team, comprising roughly 6,500 engineers and product managers, is experiencing widespread internal unrest. Employees describe being forced into the unit with little choice and assigned to generate puzzles and coding problems to train AI models—work many call "soul-crushing." The tension boiled over this week when someone hijacked an internal livestreamed presentation with an expletive-laden demand that attendees confront a senior Meta AI executive. Additionally, more than 1,600 Meta employees company-wide have signed a petition protesting a monitoring program that tracks their clicks and keystrokes for AI training data.
Why it matters
Meta is betting billions on AI and needs large amounts of training data to improve its models' ability to handle technical tasks like coding. The company chose to reassign its own engineers rather than hire outside contractors, reasoning that Meta employees have "significantly higher" intelligence than third-party contractors. However, this strategy is backfiring—the mood across the company is described as "dark" and "brutal," forcing even Meta's chief product officer to address employee concerns. This internal friction could threaten the company's ability to execute its AI ambitions if morale and retention continue to deteriorate.
What to watch
The unit is three months old and already showing signs of strain. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has justified the approach in internal meetings, and the company appears committed to the model for now. Whether Meta can reverse employee sentiment or faces further attrition in its AI division will be a key signal of whether the company can sustain this data-generation strategy at scale.
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