Much has been made about the idea that workers are effectively training their own replacements when they work with AI tools, though most employers won’t directly admit to it. Meta has apparently decided to drop all pretenses that isn’t the case. According to a report from Reuters, the company recently sent a memo to employees informing them of new tracking software that will be installed on their computers to track mouse movements and keystrokes in order to help train AI agents to perform specific work tasks.
Per the memo seen by Reuters, the surveillance tool (no reason to pretend it’s anything but that) is called Model Capability Initiative, and it will record the screens of employees as they go about their work. In addition, the company will reportedly increase its internal data collection efforts as part of its AI for Work program, which has apparently been renamed the Agent Transformation Accelerator.
All of that data will be used to train Meta’s AI models to improve the functionality of its agents, which are meant to operate autonomously and navigate across multiple systems and programs. Per Reuters, Meta’s current agent offerings reportedly struggle to perform certain actions that humans have no problem with, like selecting items from dropdown menus or using keyboard shortcuts. The new employee monitoring systems will help to refine those capabilities, which definitely should not raise any red flags for the employees of a company that is reportedly gearing up to lay off 10% of its workforce in the coming months.
The pitch to employees is that their work won’t change as a result of having persistent digital eyes on them. The company positioned the program as an opportunity for Meta employees to “help our models get better simply by doing their daily work,” with a promise that the information would not be used for performance reviews or other potentially invasive purposes.
It’s hard to imagine that’s a compelling case for employees, who don’t really have any incentive to participate in such a program. They’ve added model training to their responsibilities without any apparent increase in compensation, and the new work requires them to surrender a sense of privacy that their work isn’t being monitored.
Meta is clearly all in on AI. The company has reportedly been building AI agents meant to work alongside employees, including one designed for CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and has created a Zuckerberg chatbot for employees to communicate with. Now workers are essentially being told they are training the systems that will replace them. Might be time to figure out how to poison the well.
