Zuckerberg Finally Remembers Privacy Concerns? Meta Scales Back Employee Tracking For AI

As

artificial intelligence grows, the need for data to train AI is also increasing. Meta has now reportedly reduced parts of its employee tracking programme that was collecting workplace activity data for training AI models. As per Reuters, this change was announced on Tuesday through an internal memo after weeks of criticism from employees who raised concerns about battery usage, privacy and internet consumption.

What Has Changed

An internal memo reportedly mentions that the Meta workforce will now be able to pause data collection for up to 30 minutes at a time. The American tech giant launched the tracking software last month on computers used by its US-based staff. This system was designed to record actions such as mouse movements, clicks and keystrokes. The Zuckerberg-led firm had reportedly planned to train AI models capable of carrying out workplace tasks more independently.Now the workforce can reportedly request exemptions from the programme under certain circumstances. As per Reuters, this update was shared by Stephane Kasriel, vice president of Meta’s Superintelligence Labs division, in an internal memo.Kasriel reportedly mentioned that the company has listened to the feedback from the workforce and brought various improvements. These included measures for reducing the software’s impact on laptop batteries and lowering the amount of data the software uses.

Notably, several employees reportedly were not happy with the data tracking. Some suggest that the software collected too much data from work devices and gave the workforce little control over when monitoring takes place. The report notes that others mentioned that the programme took a significant amount of internet data and increased usage on home networks. The issue shows how big tech is constantly in the race to collect data and use it to train AI tools. As AI tools are developing, questions around employee privacy, consent and workplace tracking are becoming crucial to note.