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Meta employees are up in arms over a mandatory program to train AI on their

68 pointsby lateintoday at 9:02 AM56 commentsview on HN

Comments

yodsanklaitoday at 11:02 AM

People are always keen on criticizing the EU and their regulations, but employees in EU are protected from these kinds of stunts. And also from the upcoming (rumored) layoffs which won't be nearly as cruel.

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raxxorraxortoday at 9:10 AM

If you work for meta you shouldn't have a problem with invading the privacy of others.

Of course this is not ok, but you should really quit your job if you have ethical or moral problems with that.

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ludicrousdisplatoday at 10:57 AM

> The post says the software is limited to a list of commonly used work applications, like Gmail, GChat, and Metamate, an AI assistant for employees.

> It also says it only applies to computers, not to employees' phones.

What a great motivator for employees to stop using their work computers.

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codeuliketoday at 10:29 AM

Is this like a game where we choose the next word?

Meta employees are up in arms over a mandatory program to train AI on their _______

Pets?

Hairstyles?

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yubblegumtoday at 10:31 AM

Oddly enough was watching Colossus: The Forbin Project. One of those mid 70s scifi flicks. At some point, their AI demanded that its creator be under 24/7 audio-visiual surveillance (including bathroom time, yes).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project

p.s. was just reading the wiki plot summary and lol'ing at this bit: "Colossus has the responsible programmers summarily executed outside their workplace, left laying 24 hours, and cremated. Colossus also names their replacements. " -- karma is a bitch, indeed.

notabotisweartoday at 10:19 AM

>"This makes me super uncomfortable. How do we opt out?"

Karma’s a b*tch, innit?

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anygivnthursdaytoday at 11:00 AM

This is just v1, next release might add eye movement, pulse and brain wave tracking to train ZuckNet.

pluctoday at 10:45 AM

So they do treat their employees like their users

Havoctoday at 11:25 AM

Very little sympathy frankly.

Half the big tech world is economically built on mass scale invasive unwanted tracking & adtech. If it goes up in flames from internal tension about invasive tracking that's just karma

throw0101atoday at 10:48 AM

Now over ten years old (2015-10-16):

> 'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.

* https://twitter.com/Cavalorn/status/654934442549620736

spacechild1today at 10:41 AM

Nice. Let them taste some of their own medicine.

keyboredtoday at 9:52 AM

I don’t care about Schadenfreude. It’s good that they are making a stink.

I would bang my head against the wall if they either didn’t make a stink or publicly said that, of course the Company is going to monitor me, it’s their hardware[1] and who am I to be anything but a vessel for my employer on Company time etc.

[1] As seen in the comments on the large thread about this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47851948

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chrisjjtoday at 11:07 AM

Required reading: The Circle by Dave Eggers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(Eggers_novel)

LightBug1today at 10:54 AM

The most exquisite form of karma.

shevy-javatoday at 9:52 AM

It is in a way some kind of modern day slavery. Of course they can always decide to quit, but what if the next company uses the same sniffing strategy? On youtube you can see video clips of indians wearing various glasses to monitor their own manual work procedures. AI has truly become our new overlord, controlled by a few huge companies.

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vortegnetoday at 10:06 AM

Small-scale imperial boomerang. You thought that you're building a privacy-destroying machine and this machine will never destroy _your_ privacy?

At some point in the future, a lot of the SV techbros will be hopefully viewed as ghouls with no morals or ethics. This is not a subsection of humanity that should be dictating anything and yet they always do. If you complain about this and don't quit your job at Meta, you're failing an extremely basic check.

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andrewstuarttoday at 9:21 AM

The company is run by lizards in hoodies.

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