Meta layoffs | More than 100 risk team employees let go amid AI push: All you need to know
Meta's decision on Wednesday to lay off roughly 600 employees from its "bloated" AI team landed the company in hot water. Yet, a new report shows that the tech giant had also let go of more than 100 employees in another vital department.
In a recent note to employees, Michel Protti, Meta’s chief privacy officer, said the company would be cutting down its risk team, and automating most of its manual risk assessments.
“By moving from bespoke, manual reviews to a more consistent and automated process, we’ve been able to deliver more accurate and reliable compliance outcomes across Meta,” Mr Protti said in the memo, as per a New York Times report.
“We remain committed to delivering innovative products while meeting our regulatory obligations.”
Though Protti did not describe how many roles were being cut, most of the risk team workers being let go review projects for privacy and integrity risks, the report added, citing insiders.
While "low-risk" updates to products will now be reviewed by AI and then later audited by humans, "high or novel risk" products and their updates will still be reviewed by humans.
The risk team layoffs are the latest development in Mark Zuckerberg's major restructuring campaign, which he earlier called the 'Year of Efficiency'. This has also led to a renewed push to automate the outgoing positions.
Reports say the layoffs were likely due to Meta's executives' frustration at the risk team for slowing down product development.
However, this may not have been a question of inefficiency, as the risk assessment team is supposed to evaluate all new products for potential threats to user privacy or changes that could violate a 2019 Federal Trade Commission (FTC) consent order, over which it once had to pay a record $5 billion fine.
Current and former employees have also raised concerns about using AI to do risk assessments, warning that it may cause issues in the future, especially in sensitive cases like user privacy.
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