When Meta engineer David Frenk posted an anti-AI farewell parody video on the company bulletin board, staff thought it perfectly captured the shift in company culture.Provided by CIR/David Frank
This week’s meta fired The company hired 8,000 employees, 10% of its workforce, and reassigned an additional 7,000 to training AI models. Fears of layoffs had been building at the company for weeks, and were exacerbated by Meta’s sudden transformation from a company founded by programmers to one with its future in AI. So when Meta software engineer David Frenk posted a farewell parody video set to the tune of “American Pie” on the company message board, staff thought it was a perfect illustration of how the company’s culture had fundamentally changed. They begged him to go public with the company’s plight and post it on YouTube.
“There’s a bit of a disconnect,” said one former employee, who requested anonymity. mother jones“This is a company of really smart people who work hard: programmers, engineers, designers. People for whom creativity and intelligence are part of the job. And you’re told this AI agent can do it better than you, and you’re asked to train it.”
Meta has a tradition. When resigning, you should post a badge on the company bulletin board. Usually it’s a nod to co-creation with co-workers, and it’s very Kumbaya. But Frenk turned the badge post into a crusade in C major. It became an explosive hit.
Frenk’s video details the beginnings of a seismic shift at Meta, where the company required employees to train in AI and then laid off thousands of people.
Frenk left of his own accord — today is his last day — and had some time to decide how he wanted to go out. In an internal chat called @shitposting, which has about 20,000 members, Frenk posted a high-production-value parody of the Don McLean song “American Pie.” You probably haven’t thought about “American Pie” in a while. The song is a long ballad that explores the history of rock’n’roll and laments the innocence lost when the 1960s turned into the decade of disco. Frenk’s version details Meta’s recent history and its position on the brink of seismic change as the company requires employees to be trained in AI and then lays off thousands of employees.
The song is a perfect parody, with lyrics laced with office jokes and references that are best understood by those within the company. Meta’s chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth, a 20-year veteran of the company, has been name-checked multiple times for promoting internal monitoring software called MCI. The Model Capability Initiative is what the company installed on the computers of its U.S. employees this spring. MCI tracks how humans interact with the screen, capturing mouse clicks and keyboard strokes to train AI to appear more “human-like.”
As Frank sings:
And now I’m singing goodbye, goodbye to professional pride
Please sign the petition. I want nothing more, just deny MCI
It’s the human touch that lets you know you’re alive.
This may not be able to be replaced by AI.
When the initiative was rolled out internally, one of the most common comments on company message boards was, “How do I opt out?” a former employee said.
Frenk’s video has now been viewed tens of thousands of times on Meta’s internal messaging system, but many of the comments are from accounts that were disabled after Wednesday’s layoffs. The video appears to capture changes within the company, with 8,000 people losing their jobs even as profits hit record highs and executives received big raises. (“With investors pressuring us to get leaner,” Frenk asks in parody, “why have executive pay become so obscene?”)
“Everything feels a little strange,” the former employee said. “On a lighter note, even if you really, completely believe that this is the direction to go, everything is [in the video] It still rings true. ” (Meta did not respond to a request for comment.)
Comments poured into Blind. Blind is a bulletin board where current and former technologists from companies like Meta and Google can chat without being monitored by the company. On Blind, people posted that the video “brought tears to my eyes” and “touched my soul.”
But the really worst thing is
And the reason for the decline in morale
Have you forgotten, we’re all just humans?
When AI is abused
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