Meta lays off more than 2,000 from Menlo Park headquarters - SFGATE

Oh, brilliant — another tech giant has discovered that AI is so efficient it can replace the very people building it. Meta is laying off 2,000 employees from its Menlo Park headquarters, part of a 10% cull that will hit 8,000 worldwide. Software engineers and teams working on business-facing AI products are shown the door, presumably because the AI they were building is now good enough to do their jobs. The irony is so thick you could spread it on toast. This is the logical endpoint of the 'AI doesn't have to mean layoffs' fairy tale the New York Times earnestly peddled last week — except it does, and it's happening to the people building the bloody thing.

The WARN filing, that lovely little legal requirement that gives workers 60 days' notice before their lives are upended, reveals the cuts are concentrated at the mothership in Menlo Park. But we all know the real story: Meta's AI is automating its own creators out of existence. At least the SentinelOne crew warned us this was coming — 'weeks of work in days,' they crowed, and 230 people got the boot. Now Meta wants to make sure no one misses the message.

So here we are: the company that reshaped the world with a blue thumbs-up is now giving its workforce a different kind of thumbs-down. Mark Zuckerberg's grand vision of the metaverse may have evaporated, but his commitment to 'efficiency' is going strong. The AI revolution is eating its own children, and the only surprise is that anyone is surprised. Pass the gin.