Meta Backs Down on Keylogger Spyware After Employees Rebel Against AI Training
Imagine working at Meta, building the future of the metaverse, only to find out your boss is literally recording every single typo you make just to train your AI replacement. Turns out, even Zuck's own engineers draw the line at total surveillance.
The internal rebellion kicked off when Meta management decided that the best way to build AI agents was to turn their own staff into digital lab rats. Under the grandiosely named Model Capability Initiative, corporate MacBook laptops of US-based employees were quietly loaded with software designed to record every keystroke, mouse click, and physical movement, alongside taking periodic screenshots of their screens.
The corporate goal was simple: scrape human behavior to teach AI models how to do actual jobs. But the software turned out to be so bloated that it actively melted laptop batteries and hogged valuable internet bandwidth. Over 1,500 employees quickly signed a petition, rightfully branding their employer an "employee data extraction factory" and forcing Vice President of Superintelligence Labs Stephane Kasriel to issue a massive climbdown via an internal memo.
Under the newly revised rules, workers can now pause the invasive tracking software for 30 minutes if they need a moment of privacy. Furthermore, some lucky staff members can request a total exemption from the digital panopticon, particularly those working with highly sensitive data, remote workers suffering from terrible internet speeds, or anyone whose laptop simply cannot survive the battery drain.
Watching a trillion-dollar company get caught deploying literal spyware on its own top-tier engineering talent is the peak comedy of the AI gold rush. The tech elite wanted to automate their workers, but ended up proving that even the most compliant coders won't quietly hand over the rope to their own executioners.
Source: Neowin
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