Technology giant Meta, which owns social networks Facebook and Instagram, will begin tracking the actions of its employees, including how they use the keyboard and how they use the computer mouse, writes the BBC.
The company told its employees on the 21st of April that the new tool will run on Meta’s computers and internal apps, recording employees’ actions, which will be used to train artificial intelligence models. A Meta representative told the BBC that if virtual agents are created to help users perform everyday tasks, then the models should reflect the actions of real people at the computer. The data obtained will not be used for other purposes, and the tool has built-in security measures to protect sensitive content.
But one Meta employee, who asked to remain anonymous, said that recording every little action to train AI models as the next wave of layoffs looms is dystopian.
The employee told the BBC that the company is obsessed with AI.
Meanwhile, a former Meta employee who recently left the company said the tracking tool was just the latest way to “cram AI down everyone’s throats.”
Meta has already laid off more than 2,000 employees in several rounds this year, and employees are confident that more will be let go. In March, the company announced a partial hiring freeze. The website Meta uses to post its job listings had about 800 job openings in March, but now has just seven. A company spokesman declined to comment.
The tech giant is calling its new tracking tool the Model Capability Initiative, or MCI. The BBC understands that the company has previously been able to track activity on its computers, but until now the information had not been used to train artificial intelligence models.
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