Meta has paused a program that tracked employees' computer activity amid data privacy concerns and a staff backlash. The tool, called the Model Capability Initiative (MCI), collected data on staff keystrokes, mouse clicks, and content displayed on computer screens to train Meta's AI models.
Employee petition and privacy concerns
More than 1,600 Meta workers signed a petition against the tool, demanding the company not harvest 'employee computer use data'. The petition stated: 'Collecting and repurposing this kind of data raises serious concerns around privacy, consent, and trust in the workplace.'
Data accessibility issues
According to tech publication Wired, MCI data collected from corporate laptops had been accessible to anyone inside the company. An internal security notice referenced the exposure of data tables including 'full prompts and transcriptions, private conversations, people and performance data'.
Meta confirmed the program has been paused. 'We have carefully designed this program with privacy safeguards and while we have no indication at this time that any data was improperly accessed by Meta employees, we're pausing it while we investigate,' the company said in a statement.
Zuckerberg's AI vision
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's founder and chief executive, had told employees that AI models learn from 'watching really smart people do things', according to an account of an internal company meeting. 'The average intelligence of the people who are at this company is significantly higher than the average set of people that you can get to do tasks,' he said, adding that the coding skills of Meta engineers would dramatically improve a model's coding abilities.
Zuckerberg is pouring vast sums into an AI drive at Meta, with up to $145bn in capital expenditure this year, much of it on AI investment such as datacentres.
Prediction market project
Separately, the New York Times reported that Zuckerberg recently ordered a small team at the $1.4tn company to create a smartphone app similar to Polymarket and Kalshi, prediction market sites that allow users to place wagers on events ranging from Tony award winners to the Iran conflict. About $24bn in wagers are placed monthly on Kalshi and Polymarket, according to the Pew Research Centre.
The tentative project, called Arena, would function separately from Meta's social media and messaging apps, the NYT reported. The proto-app remains in development and may not be released.
Mike Proulx, a research director at Forrester, said moving into prediction markets, which have already drawn legal scrutiny in the US, was 'not a great look' for a company under legal pressure because of its social media products. Meta has been contacted for comment.
