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The two key ingredients to Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s<\/a> all-in AI push? Money, and a heaping serving of misanthropy.\u00a0<\/p>\n As part of his AI-first regime, Meta has fired thousands of employees while forcing the ones that remain to use the tech as much as possible, speeding them towards burnout. The expectation now is that they run a whole posse of AI agents that work in the background so a single employee can tackle multiple projects at the same time. If an employee doesn\u2019t use AI enough, they\u2019ll get dinged on their performance review<\/a>. And while Meta\u2019s future looks more uncertain than ever<\/a>, Zuckerberg has turned his attention towards building a photorealistic AI clone<\/a> of himself to make his micromanaging presence omnipresent throughout the company.<\/p>\n Morale, in other words, has been low. But it can and has gotten worse, after an executive essentially told staffers to suck it up when they questioned a sweeping new data-tracking initiative that many perceived as a thinly-veiled act of workplace surveillance, according to new reporting from The New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n Last month, Meta leadership announced it would start tracking the mouse and keyboard inputs on tens of thousands of employees\u2019 computers<\/a>, with the ostensible mission of teaching its AI models \u201chow people actually complete everyday tasks using computers.\u201d<\/p>\n Seeing this as a clear violation of their privacy, employees immediately revolted. In response to the announcement, one engineering manager commented that the program made them\u00a0\u201csuper uncomfortable\u201d and asked how to \u201copt out.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no option to opt-out on your corporate laptop,\u201d replied Meta chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth. His response was bombarded with over 100 angry and surprised emojis from employees, per the NYT.<\/p>\n Others spoke out. \u201cYour callousness to the concerns of your own employees is concerning,\u201d another employee told Bosworth. Bosworth insisted that the data the company gathers \u201cis very tightly controlled\u201d and that there was no \u201cleak risk.\u201d<\/p>\n Things got even more bleak days later, when Meta said it was laying off around 8,000 employees, in cuts that would allow the company to \u201cto offset the other investments we\u2019re making,\u201d Meta\u2019s head of human resource Janelle Gale said in an internal message obtained by the NYT.<\/p>\n