New Delhi: Meta Platforms is rolling out a new internal tracking system that captures employee mouse movements, clicks, and keystrokes to train its artificial intelligence models, according to internal documents reviewed by Reuters. This program is known as the Model Capability Initiative (MCI) and will run on work-related apps and websites and could occasionally make periodic screenshots of employee screens.
The shift is under the wider initiative of Meta to create highly intelligent AI agents to carry out routine tasks in the workplace without human intervention. The company claims that the data will allow its models to comprehend better how humans communicate with computers, including browsing menus and shortcuts, which is still a weak area of AI. Meta informed employees that they can help to make AI better by doing their day-to-day jobs.
Meta’s AI push gains momentum
Meta has been actively adopting AI in its internal operations as it moves towards automation. In another memo, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth indicated that the company is building out its “AI for Work”, which is now called the Agent Transformation Accelerator (ATA). The eventual aim is to develop the systems in which AI agents will process the majority of tasks, and human oversight and optimisation of results will occur.
Andy Stone, a spokesperson of Meta, affirmed that information gathered via MCI will be utilised in no other way than to educate AI models, which will not be utilised to evaluate employee performance. He also mentioned that there are safeguards against sensitive information, but information on the exclusions was not publicised.
Workforce changes and AI integration
The tracking program is accompanied by significant reorganisation of the workforce at Meta. The company intends to reduce approximately 10 per cent of its workforce worldwide beginning May 20, and additional layoffs are anticipated in the latter part of this year. Simultaneously, to align its staff with its AI-first strategy, Meta is restructuring groups and adding a new general position, known as an AI builder.
The company has also established a new Applied AI engineering team to improve coding and create AI agents capable of developing, testing, and deploying products with the minimal human intervention. The same pattern can be traced throughout the tech sector, as businesses such as Amazon and Block are laying off thousands of employees and investing in AI (Reuters).
Rising concerns over workplace surveillance
According to experts, the approach of Meta evokes serious questions regarding the privacy of employees and monitoring in the workplace. Ifeoma Ajunwa observed that even though monitoring tools have existed, the use of keystroke logging poses an additional layer of real-time monitoring of white-collar workers, where it was more prevalent in the gig economy.
Legal experts also note that whereas the U.S. federal law does not impose many restrictions on monitoring of the workplace, the presence of more stringent regulations in Europe may render workplace monitoring an illegal activity. Similar tracking, Valerio De Stefano noted, might be against the EU General Data Protection Regulation, as the tension between AI innovation and employee rights continues to increase.