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Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

dlx

Comments (205)

  • Avicebron
    Yeah, this is crazy, remember when engineers were actually engineers and that meant something? Imagine asking to install spyware on your lawyers' firms' company laptops because you didn't trust them not to make some deal with the judge. Or demanding 24 hour monitoring on everything a doctor does because you need to review the footage at any time.EDIT: While we are here, let's do this for politicians as well :), publicly available, auditable 24-hour surveillance.
  • dagmx
    This is going to be a huge chilling factor for employees. You’d no longer be able to disent, or discuss anything non-work related with even the slightest expectation of privacy.Yes they could have accessed logs before but there’s a difference between directed checking after incidents and active surveillance at scale.
  • gip
    Taking dystopia aside, without a lot more context I don't quite get how the captured data will be particularly useful to train models for say software engineering. If someone can shed light - thanks!
  • wrs
    >data collected would not be used for performance assessments or any other purpose besides model trainingAnd you expect Meta employees, of all people, to believe this?
  • jmull
    I like to imagine they’ll mostly capture meta employees using AIs to do work.Then they’ll deploy models trained on this, and begin capturing employees using AIs that are good at using AIs to do work.Repeat a few times and they’ll start capturing the keystrokes from people mashing their heads into keyboards with dispair and exclaiming, “Why can’t these models do anything anymore!!”
  • smalltorch
    Gotta feed the beast some how.
  • tristanj
  • toomanyrichies
    Every day I grow more and more glad that I turned down a Meta offer. It was probably a hire-to-fire offer anyway, not based on any engineering prowess on my part. Still, I couldn't be more relieved I dodged that bullet.
  • storus
    It seems like every tech company is moving towards the sweatshop model pioneered by CrossOver/Trilogy, treating engineers as human CPUs at best, monitored 24/7.
  • anon
    undefined
  • hintymad
    Maybe this is exactly why Meta poached Alexandr Wang. Data capturing is an heirloom technique passed down from his Scale AI days
  • sharts
    They have nothing else to do. Someone needs to be able to justify their position by creating stupid changes like this to create a line item on their LinkedIn.Meanwhile, nobody seems focused on capturing CEO’s data for AI training.
  • beloch
    For those saying that this is fine because company computers are company property...This is like going to work in a drug-lab where everyone is required to strip naked to ensure no "product" can be smuggled out. It's a zero trust environment at first blush, with the added terror of it being used to replace you with AI.People working naked in a drug lab have more job security than meta employees and an equivalent level of respect and trust from their employer. However, they can't unionize because they have no legal protections. Their employer could literally point a gun at them if they complained. That isn't the case for Meta employees. Just sayin'.
  • loeg
    For context, when the article says "a list of work-related apps and websites," this includes Google properties like gmail, docs, etc, and social media websites like Facebook and Instagram, with no provision for excluding personal accounts.
  • fidotron
    Meta going all in on their brand with this.Someone had to do it, distasteful though it may be. Could be quite hilarious what it learns in the process.
  • bossyTeacher
    Now that the early 10s dev worship era is officially over, all pretensions of "making the world a better place" and being nice have been dropped and devs shall remember what it feels like to be a replaceable cog that can be swapped the way we used to do with phone wallpapers.
  • Maufrais
    Seems like Skan AI's solution. They have a few Fortune 500 companies as clients doing exactly the same thing as Meta - capturing keyboard and mouse clicks to ultimately do next level process automation.
  • Desafinado
    Honest question, does most of Meta's creepiness trickle down directly from Zuckerberg, or is their entire executive also this creepy?Does the executive know better at this point but have toasted the culture and no one can fight against it anymore?
  • camjw
    I guess this is why they acquired https://www.limitless.ai/ ?
  • travelalberta
    Wasn't it a few months ago that some engineer leaked that XAI was building 'Human Emulators'. This is either Meta's attempt at the same or just a blatant lie to make sure their engineers aren't slacking off. I've heard the workload has more than doubled for those who weren't laid off which is the only reason I think it might not be a employee monitoring system as I don't think anyone there can afford to not work hard.
  • eddyg
  • nitwit005
    > to improve the company's models in areas where they still struggle, like choosing from dropdown menus and using keyboard shortcutsSeems like a strange approach in general. I'd have assumed you'd just have it use accessibility features to get at things, if there is no other interface.
  • jtemplestein
    I wonder if this screen + mouse + keyboard (+ camera + speaker + mic) interface is really the right level of abstraction to model a “digital entity”Sure, you can do everything a human can, but it also seems VERY inefficientAs an alternative, maybe you could just do network in/out?
  • turtleyacht
    Training on future vi macros. Just kk1Gi// file.js<Esc>M/func<Enter>o let<Esc>`` Taking screenshots too.
  • deadbabe
    From company metrics I have found that developers who make a lot of mouse movements correlate with weaker performance reviews. Something to think about.
  • dbgrman
    After all the layoffs, labeling people as underperformers while laying off, etc. can they stoop any lower? Why TF would anyone in their right mind would want to join this company?
  • anon
    undefined
  • xvxvx
    ‘Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the data collected would not be used for performance assessments or any other purpose’Horseshit.1. Employees are being asked to train AI to replace them.2. Performance assessments will 100% be impacted. No question.Thinking back on the OTT interview experience that Facebook helped pioneer, imagine making it through that, getting paid a massive sum of money BUT barely getting by on it because of the location, then they drop this crap on you?Big Brother is always watching.
  • instig007
    As everybody knows, key strokes and mouse movements are the things that solve problems, definitely the data worth capturing for AI training.
  • anon
    undefined
  • general1465
    When you will think about it, what actually useful data are you getting from this exercise? It is like strapping camera on a manual laborer so you can see what he sees, but you don't get data about the touch and grip and you won't get data about why he is doing specific moves.
  • rvz
    Meta can even afford to destroy themselves and their own employees.More proof that they do not care about you at all. This is Meta's way of moving fast and destroying everything at all costs.
  • bradlys
    Data collection isn’t new. The training is.
  • aanet
    > Meta (META.O), opens new tab is installing new tracking software on U.S.-based employees’ computers to capture mouse movements, clicks and keystrokes for use in training its artificial-intelligence models, part of a broad initiative to build AI agents that can perform work tasks autonomously, the company told staffers in internal memos seen by Reuters.> The tool will run on a list of work-related apps and websites and will also take occasional snapshots of the content on employees’ screens for context, according to one memo, posted by a staff AI research scientist on Tuesday in a dedicated internal channel for the company's model-building Meta SuperIntelligence Labs team.ALL YOUR DATA IS BELONG TO US¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  • Grappelli
    [flagged]
  • arghandugh
    [dead]
  • zingababba
    [flagged]
  • instig007
    As everybody knows, key strokes and mouse movements are the things that solve problems, definitely the data worth capturing for AI training.