Mark Zuckerberg Updates Employees on Slower-than-Expected Progress in AI Development.

The transition from human labor to AI is not as simple as it seems, as illustrated by Meta’s situation.

As reported by Reuters, during a recent internal town hall, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees that the advancement of AI agents has not occurred as quickly as company leaders initially expected.

Earlier in the year, Meta cut approximately 8,000 jobs—about 10% of its workforce—and reassigned another 7,000 employees to various AI teams, including one known as Agent Transformation, according to Bloomberg.

In this week’s meeting, Zuckerberg discussed these job cuts, acknowledging that they were not carried out as “smoothly” as they should have been. The layoffs were driven by worries among senior executives that the firm “wouldn’t evolve swiftly enough” with the changing technology landscape, he noted.

The CEO also pointed out that the expected advantages from the newly organized AI-centric structure have yet to “materialize,” although he remains hopeful for advancements from AI investments in the coming three to six months. Various investigative reports have characterized Meta’s newly formed AI branch as a difficult environment, as noted by some engineers involved.

Meta is committing substantial resources to AI, with estimates suggesting a potential expenditure of up to $145 billion on AI infrastructure this year, per Reuters.

TechCrunch has reached out to Meta for additional comments.