Meta Applied AI Unit Revolt After Employee Hijacks Livestream, Zuckerberg’s $14.3B Scale AI Deal

Meta’s months-old Applied AI unit has been rocked by an internal revolt after an employee hijacked a livestreamed, employee-only presentation and demanded attendees tell a senior Meta AI executive he was “a piece of sh*t.”

“Inside Meta’s Applied AI Unit: Engineers Describe a ‘Gulag’ on the Verge of Revolt Share: Meta’s three-month-old Applied AI unit of roughly 6,500 engineers and product managers is in open revolt over forced reassignments and monotonous data-labeling work, capped by a hijacked internal livestream and 1,600 employees signing a petition against keystroke monitoring”

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The incident unfolded as engineers described the three-month-old Applied AI team of roughly 6,500 engineers and product managers as “on the verge of revolt,” with assigned work centered on generating puzzles and coding problems to train AI models.

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TechCrunch also tied the drafting of employees to an internal announcement reviewed by Business Insider, which said, “For agents to understand how people actually complete everyday tasks using computers, we need to train our models on real examples.”

In the same reporting, TechCrunch said CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained why Meta used internal engineers rather than outside contractors, citing that Alexandr Wang “knows the data-labeling world well” after selling Scale AI to Meta for $14.3 billion before taking the chief AI officer role heading Meta Superintelligence Labs.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged the upheaval in an internal memo seen by Reuters, writing that the company “made mistakes” in its AI transformation and adding, “Given the complexity of these changes, we've made mistakes and will almost certainly make more.”

Reuters also reported that Zuckerberg reiterated no more company-wide layoffs in 2026 and said Meta would try to find new internal roles for reassigned staff, while TechCrunch said the Applied AI unit’s environment was described as “brutal” by Meta’s chief product officer Chris Cox.

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TechCrunch described the engineers’ sense of coercion as a stark choice to “join or quit,” with many calling themselves “draftees” and telling Wired that “It’s literally the gulag.”

The Digital Trends account tied the unrest to broader AI restructuring, saying layoffs affected roughly 10% of the workforce, or around 8,000 employees, and that more than 1,600 employees signed a petition opposing a program designed to monitor clicks and keystrokes on company devices.

The revolt is playing out alongside a separate dispute over surveillance for AI training, with more than 1,600 Meta employees signing a petition opposing a program designed to monitor clicks and keystrokes on company devices.

“Zuck admits “mistakes” the same day an engineer hijacks the all-hands”

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Digital Trends said Meta adjusted the initiative by allowing workers to pause data collection temporarily and request exemptions in certain cases, while TechCrunch reported that the Applied AI team’s morale crisis is being driven by engineers who say their work is “soul-crushing.”

TechCrunch also framed the Applied AI unit’s purpose as training models on “real examples” of how people complete tasks using computers, but engineers described the day-to-day output as puzzles and coding problems rather than product work.

Looking ahead, Reuters coverage in the Let's Data Science article said Zuckerberg promised greater stability moving forward, reiterated that Meta does not expect more company-wide layoffs in 2026, and outlined corrective steps including a company-wide hackathon in July and higher team-building budgets.