artificial intelligence<\/a> models, part of a broad initiative to build AI agents that can perform work tasks autonomously, the company told staffers in internal memos seen \u200cby Reuters.<\/p>\nThe tool, called Model Capability Initiative (MCI), will run on work-related apps and websites and will also take occasional snapshots of the content on employees\u2019 screens, according to one of the \u200cmemos, posted by a staff AI research scientist on Tuesday in a channel for the company’s model-building Meta SuperIntelligence Labs team.<\/p>\n
The purpose, according to the memo, was to improve the company’s AI models in areas where they struggle to replicate how humans interact \u200bwith computers, like choosing from dropdown menus and using keyboard shortcuts.<\/p>\n
“This is where all Meta employees can help our models get better simply by doing their daily work,” it said.<\/p>\n
The Facebook and Instagram owner has been moving aggressively to integrate AI into its workflows and reshape its workforce around the technology, arguing it will make the company operate more efficiently.<\/p>\n
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth told employees in a separate memo shared on Monday that the company would step up internal data collection as part of those “AI for Work” efforts, now re-branded as Agent Transformation Accelerator (ATA).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe vision we are building towards is one where our agents primarily do the work and our role is \u200cto direct, review and help them improve,” Bosworth said. The aim, he \u2060added, was for agents to “automatically see where we felt the need to intervene so they can be better next time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bosworth did not explicitly spell out how those agents would be trained, but said Meta would be \u201crigorous\u201d about \u201cbuilding up data and evals for all the types of interactions we have as we go about our \u2060work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone acknowledged that the MCI data would be among the inputs.<\/p>\n
AI WORKFORCE OVERHAUL<\/p>\n
Stone said the data gathered via MCI would not be used for performance assessments or any other purpose besides model training and that safeguards were in place to protect “sensitive content,” without elaborating on which types of data would be excluded from collection.<\/p>\n
“If we’re building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real examples of how people actually use \u200bthem \u2014 \u200bthings like mouse movements, clicking buttons, and navigating dropdown menus,” said Stone.<\/p>\n
The push to automate functions previously performed by human \u200bstaffers reflects a broad pattern among major U.S. companies this year, especially in \u200cthe tech sector.<\/p>\n
AI tools have captivated Silicon Valley with their ability to handle complex tasks like creating apps and organizing large volumes of data with limited human oversight, sparking a selloff in stocks of traditional software companies and inspiring some executives to plan extensive job cuts.<\/p>\n
Meta is planning to lay off 10% of its workforce globally starting on May 20 and is eyeing additional large cuts later this year.<\/p>\n
Amazon.com similarly has trimmed 30,000 corporate employees in recent months, representing nearly 10% of its white-collar workers, while in February the fintech company Block chopped nearly half of its staff.<\/p>\n
Internally, Meta has been exhorting staffers to use AI agents for coding and other tasks, even if it slows them down in the short term. It has also been wiping out distinctions between certain job functions in favor of a new general-purpose job title called \u201cAI builder.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last \u200cmonth, it created a new Applied AI (AAI) engineering team aimed at improving the coding capabilities of Meta\u2019s AI models and \u200busing them to craft AI agents that can perform the bulk of the work to build, test and ship future products \u200band infrastructure at Meta.<\/p>\n
Meta started transferring \u201cstrong\u201d software engineers into AAI earlier this month.<\/p>\n
WHITE-COLLAR SURVEILLANCE CONCERNS<\/p>\n
Computer logging \u200band screenshotting technology have historically been used by companies to hunt for employee misconduct or non-work-related activities, said Ifeoma Ajunwa, a law professor at Yale University.<\/p>\n
The move \u200cto log employees\u2019 keystrokes takes the data-gathering goals a step further, she said, \u200bsubjecting white-collar employees to a degree of real-time surveillance previously \u200bexperienced only by delivery drivers and gig workers.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the U.S. side, federally, there is no limit on worker surveillance,\u201d Ajunwa said, adding that state-level laws require at most that workers be broadly informed when employers are monitoring them.<\/p>\n
European law would likely prohibit such monitoring, said Valerio De Stefano, a law professor at York University in Toronto who studies technology and comparative labor law.<\/p>\n
In \u200bsome countries, such as Italy, using electronic monitoring to track employee productivity is \u200cexplicitly illegal, while in Germany, courts have held that employers can deploy keystroke logging only in exceptional circumstances, such as suspicion of a serious criminal offense.<\/p>\n
Additionally, De Stefano said, \u200bthe practice would likely be considered a violation of Europe\u2019s General Data Protection Regulation.<\/p>\n
More broadly, he said, awareness of employer surveillance shifts the balance of workplace power in the \u200bemployer\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Katie Paul in New York and Jeff Horwitz in San Francisco; Editing by Matthew Lewis)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Katie Paul and Jeff Horwitz NEW YORK, April 21 (Reuters) – Meta is installing new tracking software…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,8955,8956,25,8957,1122,1160,8958,8959],"class_list":{"0":"post-10951","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ai","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-andrew-bosworth","10":"tag-andy-stone","11":"tag-artificial-intelligence","12":"tag-internal-memos","13":"tag-meta","14":"tag-models","15":"tag-mouse-movements","16":"tag-tracking-software"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}