Meta Is Making Workers Train Their AI Replacements

Four years ago, Mark Zuckerberg, feeling like the admiral of the good ship Meta Platforms Inc., sent a memo to employees encouraging them to refer to themselves by the nautical term “Metamates,” apparently to foster a sense of camaraderie and shared mission or something. Now, he plans to spy on his own Metamates to help train the robots that will someday throw them overboard. They ought to mutiny.

Meta plans to put tracking software on its employees’ computers to track their mouse movements, clicks and keystrokes, Reuters reported on Tuesday. It will also randomly capture images of its workers’ screens every now and then. All of this is meant to help train AI models to better mimic what human beings do when they work on computers, including tricky stuff like using drop-down menus. One reason to do such a thing is to help eventually replace those humans with AI models, which don’t require paychecks or health insurance or common courtesy.