54 pointsby louiereederson5 hours ago11 comments
  • sharts4 hours ago
    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.

    • ndegruchy3 hours ago
      The same company is trying to build an AI Zuckerberg...
      • asdff3 hours ago
        It is going to be funny in a few decades when zuck transfers his shares and voting rights and estate to the ai bot, and makes himself functionally immortal. Or at least a sort of commissioned renaissance painting version of himself, probably.

        Imagine in 300 years we are still ruled by zuck, ellison, bezos, musk, thiel, et al, just in ai model form empowered by estates worth more than entire nations and legal protections designed to outlast heat death of the universe. Assuming there is still a "we" living on earth. Charitable assumption I guess.

        • pigeons3 hours ago
          Not funny ha-ha though.
  • toomanyrichies4 hours ago
    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.
  • eddyg2 hours ago
  • travelalberta3 hours ago
    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.
  • nitwit0053 hours ago
    > to improve the company's models in areas where they still struggle, like choosing from dropdown menus and using keyboard shortcuts

    Seems 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.

    • lelandfean hour ago
      Knowing how to make an accessible website is so rare that companies pay me money to do it for them. I wish it was good enough for people, much less companies, to rely on.
      • nitwit005an hour ago
        Even if no attempt at proper accessibility was made, it's still generally far easier to attempt to find an HTML (or other form of UI) element, than to attempt to scroll to the right spot and use visual inspection to find things.
  • turtleyacht5 hours ago
    Training on future vi macros. Just

      kk1Gi// file.js<Esc>M/func<Enter>o    let<Esc>``
    
    Taking screenshots too.
  • xvxvx5 hours ago
    ‘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.

  • Grappelli3 hours ago
    The framing here matters. Recording keystrokes and mouse movement to train autonomous agents means they're essentially trying to replicate the work, not just assist with it.

    There's a pretty direct implication: if you work at Meta and participate in this, you're generating training data for a system that's intended to eventually do your job. Consenting employees are literally labeling their own replacement.

    The thing that will be interesting to watch is whether this stays US-only for legal reasons or if that's just the pilot. GDPR makes this kind of collection significantly more complicated in Europe.

    • onlypassingthru3 hours ago
      Is US mouse movement different from European? Is it called sparkling mouse movement if it comes from California?
      • moritzwarhier2 hours ago
        US mouse movements are obviously very vigilant, some people say they're the strongest mouse movements ever seen.

        Since this is a serious website: I'd be genuinely curious how mouse velocity and trajectories differ between cultural and environmental settings (apart from hardware, that's boring and should be normalized).

        There was a time when studies made headlines that were exactly about the relationship between mouse movement, typing etc, and psychiatric disorders as well as physical health.

        Obviously, both are related.

        If you ask me, Ad tech would probably be able to tell your denominated faith using this data, when there's enough of it...

      • busymom03 hours ago
        Genuine question: would right to left language based interfaces have different type of movements and thus training data than left to right language ones?
  • instig0074 hours ago
    As everybody knows, key strokes and mouse movements are the things that solve problems, definitely the data worth capturing for AI training.
    • moritzwarhier4 hours ago
      Maybe they're building a simulation of the rich lives and behaviors of white collar office people in the early 21th century, with breathtaking detail?

      I couldn't imagine life without my unique keystrokes and mouse movements.

      • hackable_sand2 hours ago
        Like a museum exhibit?
        • moritzwarhier2 hours ago
          But you can put on 3D goggles, maybe there's even TTS narration.

          Some call it museumverse.

  • 4 hours ago
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  • general14654 hours ago
    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.
    • lelandfe4 hours ago
      More accurately learn which employees are inactive while WFH
    • Ancalagon4 hours ago
      I dont actually think its for training AI models. AI is the scapegoat - just like the layoffs