On Wednesday last week, Meta Platforms Inc began laying off employees at its offices around the globe. About 8,000 people, or 10 percent of the company’s total workforce, are set to be laid off as Meta continues restructuring and accelerates its artificial intelligence (AI) investments. The company is also reassigning about 7,000 employees to new AI-focused teams and has closed about 6,000 job openings as part of the overhaul, according to reports.
Employees at Meta’s Singapore hub were among the first to receive layoff notices via e-mail, some as early as 4am local time, Bloomberg reported. Workers in the UK, the US and other regions received word in their time zone as well. The restructuring is expected to affect engineering, product development, operations and support teams, and Meta executives reportedly issued staff notices saying the cuts would improve efficiency, make the company leaner and offset investment costs.
The layoffs at Facebook’s parent company come as Meta accelerates massive spending in AI infrastructure, data centers and advanced chips. Last month, employees were informed that 8,000 people would be laid off last week, putting the workers under immense pressure over the past month. According to media reports, employees were anxious about opening messaging apps or e-mails before arriving at the office every day for fear that they had been laid off and logged out of the company’s internal system.
The layoffs follow a Reuters report from last month that said the Silicon Valley tech titan had installed new tracking software on US-based employees’ computers to capture mouse movements, clicks and keystrokes for use in training its AI models — a move many called dystopian, as workers were essentially building their own AI replacements. It is no wonder there was an internal backlash against Meta’s AI and data tracking initiatives.
Meta is not the only company cutting jobs, as many big tech firms have also prioritized AI investments over the past few years. Cisco Systems Inc announced it would eliminate about 4,000 positions, while Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc, Block Inc and several others also announced layoffs or voluntary retirement packages in the past few months. As companies pour money into AI to seek efficiency and productivity, thousands of their employees are paving the way for the first wave of AI implementation and paying the price for that transformation.
In an environment where public anxiety around AI and job displacement is already elevated, whenever company executives tout AI innovations, employees hear only “replacement.” That explains why several US university commencement speakers, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, were met with boos when they talked about how great AI could be. That is because graduates are facing a poorly timed transition, and the transformation is happening right as they enter the workforce, putting them on edge.
With the rapid development of AI, some jobs would disappear, and other jobs would be created, along with new responsibilities. No matter how much people dislike the technology, AI is here to stay, and people have to learn how to live with it and take advantage of it. Still, Meta’s massive layoffs could have significant ramifications, as the situation is different from previous rounds of layoffs due to an economic downturn. In contrast, Meta still reported a strong financial performance and record revenue. If, after the layoffs, its operations have not declined and its output has even increased, other tech companies are likely to implement fresh rounds of job cuts to tighten operations and significantly leverage AI at every level of their organizations.
The crude reality of this new automation era is that no tech company would be absent from the AI race, but none of them would be absent from the layoff race either. Silicon Valley firings reveal shifts in the tech job market around the world, and the workforce displacement that AI is bringing about is real. As AI adaptation accelerates across industries, the government must make efforts to ensure that the technology is adopted in a way that is secure and lawful, while enabling skilled, experienced employees to receive practical support in the face of AI-driven job losses.