Instagram’s parent company Meta would lay off 600 employees in its AI division, with the aim to build new products faster, the New York Times (NYT) reported, citing a message from Meta’s chief artificial intelligence officer to the employees on Wednesday.
“By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision,” the report quoted Wang’s internal memo.
Among the AI division layoffs, Meta cut 100 jobs in its risk review organisation, three people familiar with the development told NYT.
They further added that this group reportedly includes employees responsible for ensuring Meta’s products comply with an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and adhere to privacy regulations established by various regulatory authorities across the globe.
Livemint could not independently verify the report.
Replacement with automated systems
On Wednesday, Michel Protti, Meta’s chief privacy officer, informed employees through a note that the company will be downsizing the risk team and replacing the majority of manual reviews with automated systems.
“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,” Protti said, adding, “We remain committed to delivering innovative products while meeting our regulatory obligations.”
Protti did not specify the number of roles being eliminated. However, insiders described the layoffs as a “gutting” of the employees for reviewing projects at Meta for privacy and integrity concerns, two employees familiar with the situation told NYT. Meta is cutting jobs from the risk review team in the London office and more than 100 people across the company’s risk organisation.
“We routinely make organisational changes and are restructuring our team to reflect the maturity of our program and innovate faster while maintaining high compliance standards,” a Meta spokesman was quoted in the report.
Recent developments are part of a larger restructuring of Meta’s organisational structure. Over the last three years, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO, has been actively restructuring his company to stay competitive against emerging rivals such as OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT.
However, Meta executives have grown frustrated with the pace of product development, three people told the NYT. One division causing delays by design was the company’s risk organisation.
FTC guidelines on transparency
In 2019, the FTC directed Meta, formerly known as Facebook, to implement new roles and policies to improve transparency and accountability regarding user data handling. Additionally, the agency imposed a historic $5 billion fine on Facebook for misleading users about their control over their personal privacy.
The risk organisation is tasked with supervising and auditing all new products to identify potential privacy threats or changes that might breach the FTC order the company committed to in 2019.
Notably, Protti in 2020 said the changes would lead to “a new level of accountability” and ensure that privacy was “everyone’s responsibility at Facebook.”
Doubts over efficiency
Risk organisation employees have shown scepticism about the effectiveness of replacing them with automated systems, especially on sensitive issues like user privacy. Meta has been under close scrutiny by the FTC and the Justice Department in the US for most of the past decade, and also faces intense regulatory oversight in Europe.
However, last year, Meta gradually integrated automation into its risk auditing process by categorising potential issues into two groups: “Low risk” updates to new products were initially reviewed automatically and then audited by humans, while“High or novel risk” issues required immediate review by human auditors, two people familiar with the process told NYT.
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