Zuckerberg's bold plan to replace Meta employees with AI has imploded

Meta's ambitious plan to replace a significant portion of its workforce with AI technology faced significant setbacks and resistance from employees. The company had been developing a restructuring program called Project OT, or Organization Transformation, which sought to integrate AI agents and smaller employee groups into various teams.

However, internal documents revealed that Meta was preparing for layoffs of up to 60% in some teams and hiring freezes. Despite initial progress, the AI tools did not generate the expected productivity gains, with AI-assisted code increasing by 220% but new or upgraded features reaching users only rising by 36%. Technical and security incidents also rose by 40%, and the time employees spent addressing them increased by 70%.

The problems became more evident in June when hackers exploited Meta's AI-powered customer support bot to gain unauthorized access to high-profile Instagram accounts, including the dormant Obama White House account. The company faced criticism and employee organizing efforts grew, leading to a sentiment score drop to 55% favorable from 74%.

The uncertainty around the restructuring plan fueled concerns that Meta was using the AI push as a pretext to reduce its workforce. To address these concerns, Meta restructured some engineering units and paused a mouse-tracking program that aimed to train AI agents. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that AI agents were not accelerating as quickly as anticipated and that the technology would still deliver benefits within three to six months.