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Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

reuters.com

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Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#221

Post by simplyluke »

reverius42 wrote: post #204
simplyluke wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely their right, but it's a dramatic cultural departure from the history of the company. In the late 2010s/pre-covid it was very common for employees to port their personal cell phone number to their work phone and just not have a personal cell phone . The internal culture at the company was remarkably open for their size. That all went away by the time I left in 2022, and from what I've heard it has only…

What do you think caused the change from being so employee-friendly to so employee-hostile?

I won't pretend to be a mind-reader of the executives involved. I was a line engineer, so effectively watching from the sidelines. It was temporally close to Sheryl Sandberg leaving her role as COO, but I have no insights into how much that was a factor, a reaction, or neither.

From my perspective a lot of it was downstream of over-hiring in the post-pandemic frenzy. It's hard to maintain that culture while doing large layoffs, and there's no incentive for them to do so beyond the longer term reality that many of their best employees have left and they're increasingly seen as a place to earn a top paycheck in between layoffs.

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#222

Post by nemo44x »

Probably aren’t seeing the promised productivity improvements of AI in terms of shipping production code and not just “super demos” that aren’t robust. So they want to see if the withers are really putting in the time or if the models struggle past a level of complexity that stalls or reverses early gains.

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#223

Post by vrc »

Avicebron wrote: post #188

Yeah, this is crazy, remember when engineers were actually engineers and that meant something? Imagine asking to install spyware on your lawyers' firms' company laptops because you didn't trust them not to make some deal with the judge. Or demanding 24 hour monitoring on everything a doctor does because you need to review the footage at any time. EDIT: While we are here, let's do this for politicians as well :), publ…

Of the examples you listed, politicians are the only ones you directly fund and supposedly work for you. Your lawyers and doctors aren’t your employees, and they also don’t work on your property (though lawyers might handle your documents). The biggest thing this points to is that the mask is almost entirely off between employee-employer relationships in the US, and it looks like by ensuring everyone depended on employment for insurance before turning this corner, there’s not much resistance left.

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#224

Post by gtowey »

wavefunction wrote: post #125
BeetleB wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You’d no longer be able to disent, or discuss anything non-work related with even the slightest expectation of privacy. When I joined the workforce a long time ago, I went in with the mindset that: Their property, their equipment, their right to monitor (or even keylog). I was pleasantly surprised to find that not to be the case, but I've always believed in their right to do so. Why do people expect to have a right…

>Why do people expect to have a right to do non-work related stuff on the job? Like use the restroom? Personally, I'm not a slave. I am getting more and more used to the idea of having to push back on those who do exhibit such a mentality. Y'all are beginning to become a threat to the rest of us.

Meta: look, you don't have to wear a diaper while you work, but those that do are 87% more likely to get promoted! The choice is yours!

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#225

Post by kaashif »

cyclopeanutopia wrote: post #143
satvikpendem wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, maybe they should put cameras in there too. But there's a reason we don't yet every worker still explicitly or implicitly knows not to use their work computer for personal tasks, as people can and do get fired for doing so.

This is a ridiculous statement. Everyone I know at my company uses work laptops for personal stuff. It's not in the land of freedom though, so great leaders like yourself can't fire people at will. TBH at this point I don't believe you are a real person.

I'm not American or in America, but I wouldn't use a work laptop for anything personal.

I mean I have my own laptop and phone, why would I use a work device for that stuff?

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#226

Post by lazide »

piker wrote: post #90
PradeetPatel wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tbh that's to be expected, the work machine is the company's property and there shouldn't be any expectation of privacy. I work at a tech firm in India, and we are encouraged to create skills.md based on the traits of our colleagues, with the intention of reducing key personnel risk. A handful of engineers were let go as the result of a re-alignment, and their AI counterparts are actively maintaining their code. I wo…

> A handful of engineers were let go as the result of a re-alignment, and their AI counterparts are actively maintaining their code. Feel like I'm reading a Gibson novel here.

Hint: it’s also fiction

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#227

Post by sho_hn »

vrc wrote: post #223
Avicebron wrote: post #188

Yeah, this is crazy, remember when engineers were actually engineers and that meant something? Imagine asking to install spyware on your lawyers' firms' company laptops because you didn't trust them not to make some deal with the judge. Or demanding 24 hour monitoring on everything a doctor does because you need to review the footage at any time. EDIT: While we are here, let's do this for politicians as well :), publ…

Of the examples you listed, politicians are the only ones you directly fund and supposedly work for you. Your lawyers and doctors aren’t your employees, and they also don’t work on your property (though lawyers might handle your documents). The biggest thing this points to is that the mask is almost entirely off between employee-employer relationships in the US, and it looks like by ensuring everyone depended on empl…

This is why a worker's rights movement is important. You shouldn't have to rely on your employer's goodwill. Reasonable privacy rights on work equipment should be guaranteed by law, and any large company should have a Euro-style worker's council.

The legal environment is the only way to baseline behavior. In countries with strong worker's rights, you generally don't have to fight much to make use of them; it's the norm for management, too. Likewise, the US-style norm of having no expectations toward your employer and the "stay in your lane" type takes rampant in the thread are also symptoms of the environment and its norms.

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#228

Post by colordrops »

Eventually every word spoken as well, which is already the case for most meetings, but not yet for individual interactions. Every bit of information at companies will be accessible to AI. This will allow automation all the way up to the C suite.

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#229

Post by Reisen »

PradeetPatel wrote: post #83
dagmx wrote: post #42

This is going to be a huge chilling factor for employees. You’d no longer be able to disent, or discuss anything non-work related with even the slightest expectation of privacy. Yes they could have accessed logs before but there’s a difference between directed checking after incidents and active surveillance at scale.

Tbh that's to be expected, the work machine is the company's property and there shouldn't be any expectation of privacy. I work at a tech firm in India, and we are encouraged to create skills.md based on the traits of our colleagues, with the intention of reducing key personnel risk. A handful of engineers were let go as the result of a re-alignment, and their AI counterparts are actively maintaining their code. I wo…

Wait so the engineers doing novel work are ousted; you fire the engineer that had the skill set to produce the work in the first place? Surely this is creating a Stasi-like neighbour snitching environment with chilling effect where the better you do the faster you become a target for replacement by engineer's incentivized to win points by replacing you. Even being very charitable where the scenario is the code was so poor that the code the employee is working on is so entrenched in domain knowledge they've become a huge bus factor, an LLM is going to make that kind of code worse. I'm struggling to imagine the subset of people this replaces that is not a long term detriment to everyone working there. Those people became "key personnel" for a reason no?

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#230

Post by lifeisstillgood »

But this is a good thing. Let me explain. Imagine a society where an individual’s rights are prioritised and where society is dedicated to the best interests of each citizen (not desires or wants but reasonable considered best interests)

Now imagine a society where your individual daily actions are recorded, reviewed and helpfully advised upon.

Millions of people making millions of actions each day and all recorded compared and sifted for positive feedback and improvement overall.

Just how far ahead would such a society pull compared to one that stays at today’s level. Compared to one that used totalitarian methods enabled by such surveillance?

The difference between Soviet and Western Europe was not the tech, it was the trust.

If we can build a society with f trust then this tech will turbo charge us.

If …

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