Zuck scrapped plan to replace Meta workers with AI after bots flopped
Replacing thousands of real workers with digital clones sounded like corporate genius until the shiny new algorithms performed like clueless interns.
Under the internal codename Project OT (Organization Transformation), executive leadership at Meta drafted blueprints to slash some departmental teams by as much as 60%. The vision was straightforward: unleash autonomous AI agents to handle daily operations, leaving tiny skeleton crews of surviving humans to oversee the software.
To train their synthetic successors, Meta ordered staff in the US to install surveillance software tracking keystrokes and mouse movements—effectively making employees train the very bots designed to take their paychecks.
Internal communication channels quickly boiled over with black humor and open rebellion once workers realized what was happening. To make matters worse for management, internal metrics revealed an inconvenient reality: the AI agents simply failed to deliver the promised productivity boost.
In the dead of night on May 19, just hours before the restructuring kicked off, Mark Zuckerberg abruptly canceled the second massive layoff phase planned for November. While Meta still eliminated 10% of roles the next morning, thousands of employees were reassigned to prepare training datasets rather than sent to the exit.
Tech giants spent billions convincing Wall Street that algorithms would run entire enterprises, only to rediscover that keeping a digital empire functional still requires human beings fixing the mess.
Source: Reuters
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