Why Is Meta In Crisis?; Google Search Is Over; AI Gets Booed by Graduates

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1:55That's P-R-O-T-O-N-V-P-N dot com slash uncanny for 70 % off your two-year plan. That's ProtonVPN.com slash uncanny. Welcome to Wired's Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoe Schiffer, Director of Business and Industry. I'm Brian Barrett, Executive Editor. And I'm Leah Figer, Director of Politics and Science. And we're all in the same room. Oh my gosh! For the first time. Same room! I got invited to the group chat. You did. Look at that. Today on the show, we're discussing the complete meltdown over mass layoffs at Meta. We spoke to more than a dozen employees, and it turns out the job cuts are far from the only reason why Meta employees are really going through it.

2:39And of course, we wouldn't skip the Elon Musk verdict. He lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI. in really as full a way as you can, as dramatically as possible. I know, Zoe, you're looking forward to talking about that. And I'm looking forward to talking about Google's annual developer conference, I.O., where it debuted some dramatic changes to search. And you might have seen that Google's former CEO, Eric Schmidt, recently got booed by graduating students after he praised AI in a commencement speech. We're going to get into why young adults might be using AI, but they have very complicated feelings about it.

3:14And later in the show, we're going to hear about why women married to AI bros have had enough.

3:23So first up, let's dive into what is happening at Meta. This week, the company is letting go of roughly 10 % of its workforce, which is about 8 ,000 employees total. It's the latest round of job cuts, adding to the roughly 25 ,000 jobs that have been cut in the past few years as part of Mark Zuckerberg's kind of year of efficiency that started in 2023 and now the latest AI forward workplace, which he is trying to develop and impose. And while these latest cuts are not as big as some of the rounds of layoffs that have already happened, they're getting a ton of attention because Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO, has said that the reason they're happening, in part at least, in large part, is because the company is spending so much money on AI and data centers.

4:12So we record this on a Tuesday. But the reason we're able to talk so fully about this, constantly about this, is because Meta announced this a while ago. Oh, yeah. They didn't announce it. The news leaked. But then they acknowledged it. Weeks and weeks later. Yes. But still, it's been a long time that this has been out in the open, which has resulted in, I think, a little bit of chaos time inside of Meta because you've got like a what? A one in 10 chance of not having your job anymore? Yeah. It's, I mean, suffice to say, impacting morale in really horrific ways. But it's not the only thing. Like we said, Mark Zuckerberg is also really encouraging.

4:51employees to use AI. There've been all of these changes internally to that end. Some people really like it and are adopting it. Some people are really pushing back on it. But I think for a lot of employees who joined Meta during this era of like endless perks, lots of job security, kind of like a chiller atmosphere compared to some of the other startups in the Valley. Rest and vest. They had that going for a while. I mean, kind of. It wasn't full Google, but I feel like it was somewhat there. I think to me, someone so on the outside of this in every single way, I know about these layoffs because they've been A, so chaotic, but B, in some ways like needlessly so.

5:29I'm not to say that like other tech companies aren't firing scores of workers all the time. That feels like something we discuss on this podcast frequently. But this is happening with such a large runway and in a way that's making employees feel so terrible about themselves. Well, because it's not just the layoffs, right? It's also even if you stay there, if you're not culled from the herd, you are going to have to deal with this world in which you've got spyware on your laptops. Wow. Training AI to probably take your job at some point, right? I mean, explain that a little bit. So they announced, Meta announced, and this was more public, that they were going to put software on employee laptops that would monitor like their keystrokes and how they move their cursors and basically how they do their job as meta engineers and use that as training data for their own internal models to try to make their AI models better because they're running out of other sources.

6:22Could you opt out of that, Brian? You could not. Absolutely. That's a great question. I'm so glad you asked. You could not opt out. I felt like you didn't know the answer to that one. In fact, when an employee asked in a very public forum within Meta, hey, could we not do this? Zoe, the response was? Oh, absolutely. You're going to do this. And shame on you for asking. Yeah, how dare you? And some of the employees who are staying, actually thousands of the employees who are staying, are getting drafted into the AI ranks. We published a piece today that was kind of about the morale inside the company, but also how there's been this mad dash to use up perks and stipends that employees have.

6:56But one of the things that said at the end was that remaining employees are being asked to like join AI teams. So whatever your job was previously, they're calling internally like getting drafted. You're getting drafted into the AI ranks. Now your job is going to look quite different. That's like 7 ,000 people. I've actually heard people use the word raptured. Oh, yeah. Isn't that? And I wish we had that in the story. I'm so sorry. But like raptured into other teams. All of a sudden, one day they've just disappeared. After this, after this layoff, has Zuckerberg & Co. proposed like a sort of coherent leadership plan or proposal?

7:28Like what happens after this? This is the confusing thing, according to employees I have talked to, because the tough thing about what's happening right now is that Meta is actually experiencing record or near record profits and revenue growth. Like the company is doing exceptionally well, but the company is not doing exceptionally well because of artificial intelligence. I talk to employees who are on Instagram and they say, look, our main competitor is TikTok. TikTok's not an AI company. So in fact, you're trying to index on this thing that's really not at all why we're printing money. And now you're laying a bunch of us off because of that thing, when actually we're doing our jobs quite well because again, the company's printing money.

8:03Yeah, and there seems to be sort of a little bit, I think in our reporting has shown a little bit of like mission drift within the company, right? And you've seen that not just with AI. You've seen that, I think for a long time when you see this$80 billion bet or whatever it was on the metaverse and then saying, oh, nevermind, here's this new shiny thing. AI is not another metaverse. AI, I think, has a better business case behind it. But at the same time, to your point, it's not right now. It's not making money. No, and I talked to two people who were like personally recruited by Mark Zuckerberg to join the kind of very fancy AI effort.

8:35And both of them said, look, the vision was AI-generated slop for Instagram and the other meta properties. Like it just wasn't uninspiring. Meanwhile, you have OpenAI and Anthropic, you know, not to say they've done it, but their mission is we're going to completely change the economy and cure cancer. As opposed to make your grandmother's feed the most destructive sign you can ever see. So people are just like not inspired. And even Meta has acknowledged that 10 %-ish of its ad revenue comes from scams. They're like, yes, we know there are scams. We know we make a lot of money off them. And, you know, there's a presumed like we're on it, but not enough probably.

9:12And we're seeing layoffs or announcements of layoffs in a lot of places, right? Like Microsoft, Coinbase, Cisco announced it was laying off like 4 ,000 employees. Is this the spring of layoffs? What are we looking at here? Yeah, I think it's the same conversation, I think, that is evolving a little bit where a lot of times it's cover for having overhired. But increasingly, I think, so you've made this point, it actually is getting to be the point where AI can replace some engineers or not entirely, but at least you can have like a couple of engineers overseeing some agentic AI is as or more effective than 50 engineers.

9:46I have talked to a ton of people about this. And my opinion, which I'm open to evolving over time, is that if you have really talented, high-level engineers, they can manage agents that will do the work of lower-level engineers. And so what you're losing out on is like the entry-level jobs. And we're seeing that in studies. So when we look at job loss and AI job replacement, What's happening is that entry-level jobs are being replaced by artificial intelligence. I feel like you have evolved on this in some ways. Like over the time that we've been talking about this, you really went from like, no, people aren't losing their jobs yet.

10:19We're now in like, this is starting to happen, as Brian said. What's the next stage of this? Just like tons more layoffs. Is this going to happen in a bigger, faster way? Or are we just going to see hiring just stagnant across the board? You know, it's interesting. Brian brought up Google I.O., which I am reluctant to talk about. This is crazy to me. Go ahead. We'll get there. It is. We'll get there. Temes Asabes talked to Will Knight, one of our reporters today, and he said, I don't think that we should be having layoffs. I think that AI should create more productivity and we should be doing more.

10:49And so I think you're going to see companies that are like, yeah, we can do even more than we could previously. We're just going to do more things, build more things, ship more product. But then I think you are going to see a lot of companies that say, we can build and run Shopify with a handful of engineers, not the team of hundreds that we had previously. That's just an example. Speaking of ways in which AI companies grow and change, Elon Musk officially lost his lawsuit to Sam Altman and OpenAI this week. Such a special moment. It was. It was a special moment to get people caught up a little bit who have not been tracking this as obsessively as I know Zoe has and as Leah has too.

11:23Elon Musk had sued over claims that OpenAI illegally abandoned its nonprofit mission and turned into this for-profit giant. It took a jury slightly less than two hours to say, no, go away. But it was interesting, too. The reason that they said that, they didn't even bother dealing with the merits. The statute of limitations had expired on this, basically. And they said, you cannot, it's too late to bring this. If you would want to do this, you should have done this a while ago. And even beyond the statute of limitations, maybe you have more credibility if you're doing this before you are building your own giant competitor to open AI and have such a clear monetary.

12:00interest beyond whatever like compensation you get from the trial. When the decision was released on Monday, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said that in her eyes, the trial had been worthwhile to bring clarity to the dispute and that there was, quote, a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury's findings, which is why I was prepared to accept the jury's findings and dismiss on the spot. Right. Which, just to clarify, the jury decision was only one step. We needed the judge to also make their own determination, which happened almost immediately. I was talking to someone about this yesterday, and I think that Elon Musk was trying to make the case that the clock should only have started when he realized there was a breach of the trust, basically, when he realized that OpenAI was no longer a nonprofit.

12:45And he was allowed to, like, make that case in court. I do think a lot of people were confused on this point because they were like, a statute of limitations thing seems like something he could have been told before. But I think you are allowed to argue the point. But this is why the entire trial we were like, He has to make a very compelling argument that he didn't find out that OpenAI was starting this for-profit until 2023. And that's just, the evidence did not back it up. No, I think I also should say, to no one's surprise, Elon Musk is going to appeal or says he's going to appeal. He does have infinite money.

13:20Mark Toberop had one word, one word leaving that courtroom, Elon Musk's lawyer. He just said, appeal. Yeah. He also unsurprisingly posted about it on X, saying of the judge, she just handed out a free license to loot charities if you can keep the looting quiet for a few years. I like that he called her an activist judge. I think that that has taken on like a new realm of popularity in the Trump era of like determining that these judges and this like very specific branch of the government is in fact acting against one's best interest. And again, there were emails where Elon Musk was very aware that they were starting a for-profit arm of the company, that they needed to do that to raise money.

13:58He even tried to start an AI lab within Tesla that he wanted to recruit Sam Altman to join. And then he wanted Tesla, a for-profit company famously, to buy open AI or like acquire it. I was editing the pre-writes and Paresh DeVay, one of our great reporters, had written three versions. And the first version I edited was like, Elon Musk wins. And I was just like, there's no way this person has ever seen the light of day. You didn't need to write that. What does this mean going forward for OpenAI? You know, it's interesting. I actually think it gives them a lot of momentum. And now they're going to like go full speed ahead.

14:31I do think the image of OpenAI and Sam Altman in particular has been a bit tarnished throughout this trial. It came on the heels of like a series of reporting about his allegedly duplicitous behavior. And I don't think he looks necessarily better coming out of the trial. But I think the company, you know, is really bullish on its IPO, which could come as soon as this year. Like it's full steam ahead on enterprise code, which is kind of the phrase of Silicon Valley right now. And so I think people are feeling really, really good over there. I do think that to your point about this was also a trial in the court of public opinion, right?

15:06A lot of this was trying to like embarrass the opponent. But it was just a mud fight where everybody got dirty, right? Nobody came out of this looking great. Nobody came out of this. I don't think anyone changed anybody's minds about, oh, no, you should be entrusted with the future of this, like, powerful technology. The maker of butt pillows for courtrooms. They're the real winners. That was a fantastic. Rambant butt pillow usage in the courtroom by – and different brands of butt pillow, too. Different brands of butt pillow. Yeah, fancy ones, cheaper ones. Everyone's using a fancy butt cushion on those rock hard seats.

15:42Yeah, I mean, I think Elon Musk is a very litigious figure. I think he is willing to roll the dice and try for a lawsuit on the off chance that it could be successful. But I also think he knew that, and he said this in text messages that were revealed as part of the trial when, you know, there was settlement conversations before it started. And he said, you being Sam Altman and Greg Brockman are going to be, you know, the most hated men in America by the end of this. And I think that was partially his intent, at least we think. I'm about to be the most hated man on this podcast. So ready. Couldn't be more ready.

16:16Because, and I don't know why this was contentious. I'm genuinely baffled. So, again, we're recording this on Tuesday. Google had its I.O. conference. It's its big developer conference every year. And when we started playing with this podcast, I said, hey, we should probably talk about Google I.O. And you both said, oh, my God, yes, we love Google I.O. Strongly disagreed. I acted like I had a head growing out of my neck, a second head growing out of my neck, like I was suggesting the most insane thing in the world. Before we talk about Google I.O., why? Why? I have my own reasons. I'm curious what Zoe's are.

16:52Yeah, it's boring. Okay. Okay, good. Okay. Yes, moving on. I feel funky sometimes when we're being spoon-fed news by these tech companies or by the U.S. government or by whatever entity we're reporting on, which isn't to say that reporting on these very important changes to, I don't know, the world's largest and most impactful and powerful search engine isn't entirely valuable. But is it something that I want to speak about in this sacred space of the podcast? I guess what I would say is, as with anything, we don't transcribe what they say at these events. We put them in proper context and do the reporting to back it up.

17:31We have a great team of gear reporters who do phenomenal work and did phenomenal work today. Without a doubt, in full love and support of them. So I appreciate where you're coming from, but you're both wrong. Wow. And he's our boss, so we're going to say. Here's why. Google search is changing more than it ever has. Okay. They are, think of search now instead of as a search box. It's been drifting this way. Like it's no longer 10 links, but it's not even like even one link now. Google search is now like basically a chat bot. Like it's a conversational query. Like it'll expand where you put in like, what do you, you know, hey, what do you think Google's?

18:09Should I do this? Whatever. And it'll not just show you sort of text necessarily. It'll also show you an interactive graphic that it just cooked up. It'll show you different, like it'll, instead of saying, I want to go to Google Images for this. It'll be like, here's your images. And also, here's this. That's phase one. Phase two is going to be agentic search. So that means you go to Google and you say, hey, let me know. The example they gave was something to the effect of, let me know when my favorite celebrities are dropping new shoe collabs. And that's it. And you're done. Google agents will then, AI agents, will then monitor the web for you.

18:46They will do the searching for you. And they will send you a notification through your Google app that says, hey, this thing just dropped that you're looking for. The idea is not only that you're not going to visit websites anymore because it's all going to be within Google, you're not going to search anymore. You're not going to use the internet anymore because agents are going to do it for you. Google is going to mediate every interaction you have with the web. It's a really, really significant change. And I think it's one that is definitely worth talking about. What does it mean for us? What does it mean for Wired.com?

19:19Not good? Okay. But I think we and other publishers have sort of been assuming that we can't rely on Google for a while now. That's why a direct relationship with our audience is so important, and we sort of invest in different things along those lines. A really important moment to say, please subscribe to Wired.com. Please subscribe to Wired.com. Please go to—you can mark Wired as a preferred source in Google, all those things. But I think everybody's sort of embracing for this moment. It's just—it feels more like it's here than it has in a while because there's sort of this general AI overviews.

19:49But no, now AI Review is the whole thing. Yeah. And again, like you said, we've known that Google was headed in this direction. But I do think it's a really interesting moment for the company because search is such a big part of its business model. And ads on search are such a big part of its business model. And so it feels a little bit like it's cannibalizing itself while at the same time preparing for a new future. Like I'm curious. I mean, I assume there'll be stuffing ads in this thing and that will be how they make money. But like you would imagine that they're also going to take an interim hit.

20:21I mean, the branding of it aside of like what that's going to look like, what your search experience is going forward. I have to assume there's going to be at least like some teething issues there. Yeah, I'm sure. I think that in the same way that a lot of people don't love AI overviews and have been begging for a way to turn it off and haven't really had an easy way to do it. I think that's going to be the same thing. But there's also not much you can do about it. Google's very clearly committed to this. It's clearly how they want the web to work. What I worry about even more than that, like Google's bottom line, is something, again, it's the sort of same themes but accelerated.

20:54The idea that once you sort of stop going to websites and once you stop, once it's only agents, only bots are visiting websites, you're choking off the supply of information, right? You are, you know, smaller publishers. Well, you're going to run out at some point. Exactly. So, you, like, the web itself kind of shriveled up into a Google-shaped hole. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I know. No, I feel like Sam Altman has been asked about this recently. Like, what happens to publishers in this world? And the answer is like micropayments. And I'm like, look, our industry is not going to be held up by like 10 cents or even, you know, point.

21:27I don't know what it's going to be. Every six years, someone decides micropayments are going to save journalism. Every time I hear that, I see red. I talk to people in the industry. They'll say like, you know, that's the future. And also, I loved that this like, you know, 6 ,000 word story you did on like the sand that makes the iPhone or whatever. And I'm like, guess how much that story cost to report? Like just the payment to the freelancer. Like it's thousands. I'm going to pull this back from implications for us and focus again on the broader implications. Because there's one other part. There were a lot of announcements today.

22:02Search to me was the biggest one. I'll say, too, like Google has announced big changes before and then like not actually gotten there and not gotten aware in the way that they initially proposed. So there's a little bit of an asterisk next to a lot of this. I think it's probably mostly coming, though. But they also announced something called Gemini Spark, which I just want to talk about very briefly. Gemini Spark is Google's answer to OpenClaw. We remember OpenClaw. We had fun with OpenClaw. Yeah, definitely. Delightful. OpenClaw, a little agent that can sort of just like run autonomously, has access to all your stuff.

22:31Yeah. Gemini Spark is Google's answer to OpenClaw. It's the same sort of autonomous assistant that can do all the things. But because it's Google, it has access to everything that you do on Google or any app that you tie in. So you can see how that becomes really powerful and a real sort of, you know, OpenClaw is already kind of a privacy question mark. This even more so. It's like you have it, give it access to your Gmail, give it access to your calendar, give it access to like everything that you touch online, all of your entire search history. and just say, hey, go do this. Remind me of this.

23:03Do that. I couldn't be less interested in a product. We know. But here's the thing. I agree. It's not for me, but it's the kind of thing where this is going to be presented eventually to billions of people, right? The scale is the thing who don't necessarily know or understand or appreciate, not talking down to anybody, but this is the way in which this thing will have access to your stuff, can go wrong potentially. I would say that OpenClaw was kind of a one-man project. Like the founder is now part of OpenAI, but this was kind of a bootleg kind of experiment. I would imagine that when Google does it, they're implementing more safety cards.