Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak (wired.com)
- Reference: 0184071138
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/06/24/216239/meta-pauses-employee-tracking-program-following-internal-data-leak
- Source link: https://www.wired.com/story/meta-pauses-employee-tracking-program-following-internal-security-breach/
> Meta rolled out the Model Compatibility Initiative (MCI) tool [2]in April to US employees. The tool "collects computer inputs such as mouse movements, click locations and keystrokes, as well as screen content," according to workers who have been petitioning against it over privacy, security, and personal liberty concerns. When MCI launched, employees [3]couldn't opt out , but that changed to a limited degree after workers protested. Meta executives have repeatedly defended the data-gathering project, saying it was necessary to train AI systems to operate computer software the way humans do and that employees were the best examples for the artificial intelligence to learn from.
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> On Monday, a Meta engineer issued an internal security notice stating that databases filled with information gathered by MCI had been exposed to anyone inside the company. A former employee actively involved in pushing back against MCI describes the lapse as "a mess" -- and one that employees had expected would occur. "When workers raised concerns, leadership doubled down and failed to acknowledge the risks workers raised about the safety and privacy of worker and customer data," the person says. "Leadership has clearly created an authoritarian environment where workers are no longer respected or heard."
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> But after critical comments poured into internal forums on Monday expressing frustration about the security issue, Meta shocked some of its staff by pausing MCI altogether, telling WIRED about the development several hours before announcing it to employees. A few workers told WIRED they were confused in the meantime because the tool was continuing to run on their laptops. Late on Monday, Stephane Kasriel, a Meta vice president overseeing AI research, announced the pause and told staff that the security issue had been discovered on June 18 and addressed within four hours. But the initial fix didn't stick and access to the data had to be further locked down. The issue made "some MCI-derived data" accessible to more people than intended, he wrote, without elaborating.
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/meta-pauses-employee-tracking-program-following-internal-security-breach/
[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/04/21/1849217/meta-to-start-capturing-employee-mouse-movements-keystrokes-for-ai-training-data
[3] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/06/03/1713239/meta-workers-can-opt-out-of-workplace-tracking-for-up-to-30-minutes
You can't look away from it (Score:2)
> Meta executives have repeatedly defended the data-gathering project, saying it was necessary to train AI systems to operate computer software the way humans do and that employees were the best examples for the artificial intelligence to learn from.
Okay, this puts a chill up my spine.
Re: (Score:2)
I find it hysterical. The current massive problems with LLMs are not a result of too little training data. They are a result (in part) of low quality training data. And they are just gathering more of it.
Old joke, bad business practice (Score:4, Insightful)
Cop sees a guy at midnight on his hands and knees looking under a street light. Asks him "What are you doing?"
Guy says "Looking for my car keys."
Cops help him look for a while and then asks "Are you sure you dropped them here?"
Guy replies "No, I dropped them over there in the dark but there is no chance at all I could find them there, it is too dark."
When you track things, you think you make decisions/rules based on what you track. But you can't really track the good stuff like effectiveness, creativity, or intelligence. Mouse clicks, key strokes etc. are what they track, so they build their AI on that stuff.
It's no different than looking under the street light - you won't find what you want, just the stuff that is easy to find.
This kind of thing is an unnecessary invasion of privacy that will result in an AI copying the mistakes of humans, not their best behavior.
Re: (Score:3)
You can detect who's taking a break, though. But tracking IT worker productivity by activity time is as useless as using meters of mouse movement. The productive part is not typing the actual code, but thinking about it. And this may involve you sitting in front of the machine not touching any part of it, or taking a walk in the park being "unproductive" while thinking about the solution.
Title Correction: (Score:2)
> Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak
"Privacy Rapist Meta[stasize] Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Privacy Data Rape"
There FTFY.
Spotlight Accountability. (Score:2)
> Meta has paused its Model Compatibility Initiative..after some of its collected data became accessible to more employees than intended.
When a candle is all that is needed to put a spotlight on your behavior to change it, it says a lot about your fucking behavior.
Those are supposed to be valued employees. Not suspects.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah... you're supposed to think you're a "valued employee"... the company couldn't give a *i*s less about you.
And, working for a company like that, you should be expecting nothing less than replacement, at some point.
There's no such thing as a 'valued employee'... just an expendable nobody.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see the problem. The data is being used only to train AI agents. I'm sure it would never be used for any other purpose, intentionally or unintentionally...
And I'm also sure that none of the employees being tracked are at risk of losing their jobs to said AI agents.
Re: (Score:2)
Not that valuable for AI (agents are software using AI). It's just surveillance. They may still be using AI to detect patterns who is "unproductive".