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In May, Meta laid off roughly ten percent of its global workforce, affecting almost 8,000 people. The vast culling came amidst repeated promises of an AI-led technological revolution that would make human labor a thing of the past. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in particular, was clearly infatuated by the idea.<\/p>\n
As Reuters reports<\/a>, Meta execs developed a radical plan under his leadership, codenamed Project Organization Transformation, or Project OT for short, to have AI agents assume the roles of thousands of human staffers.<\/p>\n According to the news agency\u2019s extensive reporting, execs originally wanted to cut teams by as much as 60 percent, a staggering number that quickly turned out to be completely unrealistic. A second \u201cwave\u201d of layoffs following May\u2019s brutal layoffs was ultimately called off as Zuckerberg\u2019s plans to rid his company of pesky and expensive human resources crumbled in an embarrassing setback.<\/p>\n The layoffs in May ballooned into a PR disaster of epic proportions. One lawsuit filed by 26 employees accused the company of using an internal AI platform to select targets<\/a>, disproportionately targeting people with disabilities.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the poorly executed firings threw workplace morale in a tailspin<\/a>, with furious staffers lashing out in expletive-laden rants<\/a> on internal message boards as Zuckerberg promised better snacks and hackathons<\/a>. Meta also received serious flack<\/a> for trying to install<\/a> surveillance software on staffers\u2019 computers to train AI on everything they typed and clicked on<\/a>.<\/p>\n Zuckerberg has also had little to show for his AI efforts, even as he conceded that the cuts were meant to clear up funds for ballooning capital expenditures<\/a>. Unperturbed, Meta raised its spending forecast for 2026 as high as $145 billion, even as cash flow cratered<\/a>.<\/p>\n