Replacing human workers with artificial intelligence appears to be more challenging than anticipated, if Meta’s experience is any indication. According to Reuters, during an internal town hall meeting on Thursday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg informed staff that the development of AI agents had not “accelerated in the way” executives had previously expected. Earlier this year, Meta laid off approximately 8,000 employees—roughly 10 percent of its corporate workforce—and reassigned another 7,000 workers to various AI-focused groups, including one called Agent Transformation, as Bloomberg reported. During this week’s meeting, Zuckerberg reportedly acknowledged that these job cuts were not as “clean” as they should have been. He explained that the reductions were made because top company officials “were worried that we weren’t going to move fast enough to adapt” to the rapidly shifting tech industry landscape. The CEO also noted that the anticipated benefits of the new AI-driven corporate structure had not “come to fruition yet,” though he expressed optimism that the company would begin seeing improvements from its AI investments within the next three to six months.

Several investigative reports have painted Meta’s months-old AI unit as a demoralizing environment, with some engineers describing it as a “soul-crushing gulag.” Despite these challenges, Meta has poured significant resources into artificial intelligence, with Reuters reporting that the company is expected to spend as much as $145 billion on AI infrastructure this year alone.