Several Meta employees accuse the company of relying on artificial intelligence to lay off employees, suspected of discrimination
26 Metaverse employees have filed a lawsuit accusing the tech giant of using artificial intelligence to screen for mass layoffs, something Metaverse denies 26 Meta employees jointly filed a lawsuit accusing the technology company of using artificial intelligence to screen candidates for layoffs. The trillion-dollar technology company firmly denied the relevant accusations. This spring, Metaverse announced plans to lay off 8,000 people, accounting for about 10% of its total employees, in order to allocate resources and fully promote its ambitious artificial intelligence development plan. All 26 people sued this time are included in the layoff list. The complaint, filed Monday in the Oakland, California, court, states: Yuanverse relies on artificial intelligence systems to score, rank and determine layoff candidates, rather than comprehensive manual judgment by managers who are familiar with employees' work conditions; at the same time, the AI screening mechanism has a clear bias against employees who take sick leave and family leave. The AI system is judged based on performance ratings, calibration scores, work output and productivity metrics. However, employees on medical leave and family leave cannot accumulate the above data, and the scores of relevant indicators for disabled employees will be low. The 71-page lawsuit states: "The law requires companies to conduct personalized manual reviews that are not affected by leave and disability adaptation policies, but Metaverse has not suspended this AI screening system and skipped the compliance review process." Metaverse responds: The accusations are baseless The complaint shows that all 26 plaintiffs have taken or applied for statutory protected leave, or applied for and enjoyed reasonable job adaptation arrangements due to disabilities. The Verge and other U.S. media quoted a Metaverse spokesperson as saying: “People management and organizational personnel decisions are always made by humans, and artificial intelligence only serves as an assistant and is not the main body of decision-making.” "These accusations lack factual support and are completely unfounded," the spokesperson said via email. AFP sent an interview request to Metaverse, but the company has yet to respond. This large-scale layoff of Yuanverse is to raise funds to invest in the computing infrastructure competition. The company plans to invest up to $145 billion in artificial intelligence this year, nearly double last year’s investment.