‘Tell Him He’s a Piece of Shit’: Meta’s New AI Unit Is a Total Mess
‘Tell Him He’s a Piece of Shit’: Meta’s New AI Unit Is a Total Mess
“告诉他他是个混蛋”：Meta 新成立的 AI 部门乱成了一锅粥
Someone interrupted a livestreamed, employee-only presentation at Meta earlier this week with an expletive-filled outburst about “being the company’s bitch,” according to a recording heard by WIRED. The individual then asked the people leading the call to write to a specific Meta AI executive and “tell him that he’s a piece of shit.” 据《连线》（WIRED）听到的一段录音显示，本周早些时候，在 Meta 一场仅限员工参加的直播演示中，有人突然打断会议，用充满脏话的言辞抱怨自己“成了公司的走狗”。随后，此人要求会议负责人写信给 Meta 的某位 AI 高管，并“告诉他他是个混蛋”。
One of the presenters covered their face with their hands, according to a witness. (The speaker could not be reached for comment, and the meeting’s two leaders moved on with their technical talk after asking everyone to mute, though employees commented on the stream about the “spicy” start.) 据目击者称，其中一位演讲者当时用手捂住了脸。（该发言者目前无法联系置评，会议的两名领导者在要求所有人静音后继续进行了技术讲座，尽管员工们在直播评论区讨论了这个“火药味十足”的开场。）
The incident, which took place on a call open to thousands of employees, reflects growing frustration inside the company’s Applied AI team, which was formed in March to support the work of AI researchers at Meta Superintelligence Labs. Three current employees tell WIRED there is widespread dissatisfaction with how Meta assembled the unit of about 6,500 engineers and product managers and the drudgework they allege they have been assigned to improve AI models. Each spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. 这起发生在数千名员工参与的会议上的事件，反映了公司“应用 AI”（Applied AI）团队内部日益增长的挫败感。该团队成立于今年 3 月，旨在支持 Meta 超智能实验室（Meta Superintelligence Labs）AI 研究人员的工作。三名现任员工告诉《连线》，Meta 组建这个拥有约 6500 名工程师和产品经理的部门的方式，以及他们被指派去改进 AI 模型的繁重工作，引发了普遍不满。由于未获授权接受媒体采访，他们均要求匿名。
“It’s literally the gulag,” one of the employees claims. “You have zero purpose in life all of a sudden, you barely interact with anyone, you just have these tasks every week.” “这简直就是古拉格（劳改营），”其中一名员工声称。“你突然间觉得生活毫无意义，几乎不与任何人交流，每周只是机械地完成这些任务。”
Another employee describes some of the tasks—generating puzzles to test how reliably AI models from Meta and other companies can solve them—as easy compared to the software development work they had been doing previously. But the new projects feel menial, and “almost all” employees seem unhappy, they say. “Most people find the work soul-crushing,” the third employee says. 另一名员工描述了其中的一些任务——生成谜题以测试 Meta 及其他公司的 AI 模型解决问题的可靠性——与他们之前从事的软件开发工作相比，这些任务非常简单。但他们表示，这些新项目让人感觉卑微，而且“几乎所有”员工似乎都不开心。“大多数人觉得这份工作令人心力交瘁，”第三名员工说道。
Meta declined to comment for this story. Meta 拒绝就本文置评。
Applied AI isn’t the only unit where tensions are boiling over and contributing to what workers describe as record-low morale. The company’s AI-focused restructuring, which included 10 percent of the company, or 8,000 employees, being let go last month has generated extra work and stress throughout several divisions, including data center engineering and Instagram, several current and former employees tell WIRED. “应用 AI”并不是唯一一个矛盾激化并导致员工士气降至历史最低点的部门。多名现任和前任员工告诉《连线》，公司以 AI 为核心的重组（包括上个月裁员 10%，即 8000 名员工）给包括数据中心工程和 Instagram 在内的多个部门带来了额外的工作量和压力。
Across the company, more than 1,600 employees have signed a petition demanding that Meta stop a recently launched initiative to monitor US employees’ clicks and keystrokes to generate AI training data. (The company has scaled back the program slightly, allowing employees to pause data collection for up to 30 minutes and request specific exemptions). 在全公司范围内，已有超过 1600 名员工签署请愿书，要求 Meta 停止最近推出的一项计划，该计划旨在监控美国员工的点击和按键行为以生成 AI 训练数据。（公司已略微缩减了该计划，允许员工暂停数据收集最多 30 分钟，并申请特定豁免。）
During a meeting this week open to all employees at Instagram, Meta chief product officer Chris Cox addressed the “difficult” and “brutal” environment created by the “insanity of this company” in the past few months, according to a recording heard by WIRED. Cox applauded Instagram employees for launching features and serving around 2 billion users amid what he compared to “running a marathon in the middle of a hailstorm and then, like, your teammate gets replaced and then we’re recording you.” 据《连线》听到的一段录音显示，在本周 Instagram 全体员工会议上，Meta 首席产品官克里斯·考克斯（Chris Cox）谈到了过去几个月里由“这家公司的疯狂”所造成的“困难”和“残酷”的环境。考克斯称赞 Instagram 员工在重重压力下仍能推出新功能并服务约 20 亿用户，他将这种处境比作“在冰雹中跑马拉松，然后你的队友被换掉了，而且我们还在录像。”
“It’s like what the fuck,” he said, drawing laughs, before repeating himself. “It is like what the fuck.” “这简直是搞什么鬼（what the fuck），”他说，引来一阵笑声，随后又重复了一遍，“这简直是搞什么鬼。”
Cox said he needed to reckon with how he and other leaders could “get in touch with the company again” and “not be overearnest” about the power of AI. “It is neither god, nor is it the devil,” he said. “And it’s nowhere near as good as you think it is, and it is nowhere near as bad as you think it is. And it changes every week … and it doesn’t know what day of the week it is.” 考克斯表示，他需要反思他和公司其他领导者如何才能“重新与公司建立联系”，并对 AI 的力量“不要过于狂热”。“它既不是神，也不是魔鬼，”他说。“它远没有你想象的那么好，也远没有你想象的那么坏。它每周都在变化……而且它自己都不知道今天是星期几。”
In an internal memo on Friday seen by WIRED, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that recent organizational changes had caused distress across Meta. “Given the complexity of these changes, we’ve made mistakes and will almost certainly make more,” he wrote. “As we navigate this period, I’m also focused on providing as much stability going forward as possible.” 在《连线》看到的一份周五内部备忘录中，Meta 首席执行官马克·扎克伯格承认，近期的组织架构调整在 Meta 内部造成了困扰。“鉴于这些变革的复杂性，我们犯了错误，而且几乎肯定还会犯更多错误，”他写道。“在我们度过这一时期的同时，我也专注于在未来尽可能提供更多的稳定性。”
Zuckerberg reiterated a vow to not carry out additional mass layoffs this year. He introduced a plan to limit the number of employees per manager, which on some teams, such as Applied AI, had deliberately ballooned to a ratio of 50 to one. Budgets for team events would increase, he said, and a large hackathon planned for next month could also help bring the company together. By the end of the year, employees in many locations would have assigned desks again, the CEO wrote. 扎克伯格重申了今年不会进行额外大规模裁员的承诺。他提出了一项计划，限制每位经理管理的员工人数——在“应用 AI”等一些团队中，这一比例曾被刻意扩大到 50 比 1。他说，团队活动的预算将会增加，计划下个月举行的大型黑客马拉松也有助于增强公司凝聚力。这位 CEO 写道，到今年年底，许多办公地点的员工将重新拥有固定的办公桌。
“Talented People” “人才”
Zuckerberg’s memo also addressed the allegedly dismal situation in Applied AI directly, referring to the unit by its acronym. He suggested the team was a waypoint, not a destination. “Work like AAI is critical to advancing our models and it lets very talented people contribute to those efforts while we create other roles they can contribute to around Meta over the coming months as well,” he wrote. 扎克伯格的备忘录还直接回应了“应用 AI”部门（文中简称 AAI）据称惨淡的现状。他暗示该团队只是一个中转站，而非终点。“像 AAI 这样的工作对于推进我们的模型至关重要，它让非常有才华的人能够为这些努力做出贡献，同时我们也会在未来几个月内创造其他岗位，让他们能在 Meta 的其他领域发挥作用，”他写道。
Engineers selected for the unit have no choice but to join or leave the company, an unusual requirement for highly valued technical employees in Silicon Valley. That’s led some members of Applied AI to describe themselves as “draftees.” 被选中进入该部门的工程师别无选择，要么加入，要么离职。这对于硅谷高价值的技术员工来说是一项不同寻常的要求。这导致一些“应用 AI”的成员将自己描述为“被征召入伍者”。
The organization has grown in batches since early April. “It’s crazy to watch people experience the shock of it as each wave comes in,” an early member of Applied AI says. 自 4 月初以来，该组织一直在分批扩张。“看着每一批新加入的人经历这种冲击，真是太疯狂了，”一名“应用 AI”的早期成员说。
Some employees are being asked to finish two tasks per week. These involve generating complex software coding problems to help AI scientists better train and evaluate the performance of the latest frontier models. Some of the work is meant to help develop AI agents that generate software or other outputs. 一些员工被要求每周完成两项任务。这些任务涉及生成复杂的软件编码问题，以帮助 AI 科学家更好地训练和评估最新前沿模型的性能。其中一些工作旨在帮助开发能够生成软件或其他输出的 AI 智能体。
One worker describes the assignment as “mechanical and not creative,” and certainly “not using their full skill set and knowledge.” They feel they were hired to develop social media apps for billions of people, but now find themselves assemblin… 一名员工将这些任务描述为“机械且缺乏创造性”，并且肯定“没有发挥他们的全部技能和知识”。他们感到自己当初被聘用是为了开发服务数十亿人的社交媒体应用，但现在却发现自己沦为了……