The year has just begun, and it seems like challenges are already knocking on the doors of Meta employees. In a recent report published by The New York
Times, it has been revealed that the Meta Reality Labs team could go through a ten percent reduction in the workforce, especially from the metaverse department. As per the report, the layoffs come as casualties due to Meta's adamancy towards putting it all in the AI development department. This is naturally supposed to reduce focus and resources from other teams. As per Times, Meta Chief Technology Officer, Andrew Bosworth called a meeting for Wednesday that he, 'urged staff to attend in person,' dubbing it is going to be the 'most important' meeting of the year. For those who are unaware, Bosworth looks after the Reality Labs divisions, which consist of around 15,000 employees. Now, the firing in the metaverse is nothing like a surprise because Bloomberg already reported last month that Meta is planning to cut down the budget of the metaverse by 30 percent. Another major reason behind the same could be the unprecedented success of Meta Ray Ban smart glasses that outclassed its VR headsets. Due to this, the metaverse section has been struggling for a long time, even without AI in the picture. Furthermore, a lot of users think that the VR social platform is already as good as dead, which is another major reason why Meta might be thinking of shifting their priorities and focusing completely on AI training and development. And the seriousness about AI development from both Meta and Mark Zuckerberg is not hidden from anyone. Last year, Zuckerberg went on a poaching spree and collected the greatest AI minds from the industry to make the Meta Superintelligence team, which will be working on the AI projects of the company.
