A Wired report reveals deep discontent within Meta’s three-month-old Applied AI team, where 6,500 employees were “drafted” into grueling data-labeling work or forced out. Internal outbursts, petitions against keystroke monitoring, and surprise reassignments have left engineers calling the unit a “soul-crushing gulag.” Leadership acknowledges the mistakes and low morale in an internal memo.

• Meta reassigned 6,500 engineers into an "Applied AI" unit to do data-labeling grunt work, with no real choice but to comply or quit, and morale has collapsed to the point employees call it a "soul-crushing gulag"
• Someone hacked a livestreamed internal presentation to call a senior AI executive "a piece of sh*t," reflecting broader anger over the forced reassignments
• Over 1,600 employees signed a petition opposing keystroke and click monitoring used to generate AI training data
• Zuckerberg and Chief Product Officer Chris Cox have both acknowledged internally that the situation is bad, with Cox calling the environment "brutal" and Zuckerberg admitting mistakes while promising fixes