In May, Meta laid off roughly ten percent of its global workforce, affecting almost 8,000 people. The vast culling came amidst repeated promises of an AI-led technological revolution that would make human labor a thing of the past. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in particular, was clearly infatuated by the idea.
As Reuters reports, Meta execs developed a radical plan under his leadership, codenamed Project Organization Transformation, or Project OT for short, to have AI agents assume the roles of thousands of human staffers.
According to the news agency’s extensive reporting, execs originally wanted to cut teams by as much as 60 percent, a staggering number that quickly turned out to be completely unrealistic. A second “wave” of layoffs following May’s brutal layoffs was ultimately called off as Zuckerberg’s plans to rid his company of pesky and expensive human resources crumbled in an embarrassing setback.
The layoffs in May ballooned into a PR disaster of epic proportions. One lawsuit filed by 26 employees accused the company of using an internal AI platform to select targets, disproportionately targeting people with disabilities.
