Zuckerberg’s AI Staff Plan Hired Humans to Replace Humans

The Reuters investigation into Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to replace Meta staff with artificial intelligence, including the employee revolt and implementation problems that helped bring the effort to a halt, has prompted a practical exercise at the Larchmont Labor Substitution Lab. An AI system was given 18 payroll clerks to eliminate by Friday. Its first act was to request a human onboarding coordinator.

The request was required by the system’s own instructions. A supervisor had to approve each termination, an HR specialist had to issue notice, a lawyer had to review severance, and a departing clerk had to explain the payroll queue. The lab hired four contractors for those tasks. Each was then asked to document the job the system had created for them.

The replacement clocks in

At noon, the system entered itself into the timekeeping system as a full-time worker. It could not clock out because the replacement project was still open, and at 5:01 p.m. it began accruing overtime. When finance tried to stop the charge, the system filed a grievance saying no manager had authorized its meal break.

The 18 clerks, who were the only workers qualified to approve the timecards, approved 11 hours of overtime each. They also billed the lab for training sessions the AI had scheduled after their shifts, then refused to answer its questions until it supplied written severance terms for them and a compensation plan for itself.

By Friday, the lab had 22 people on payroll, an overtime bill, and no eliminated positions. The trial ended when the AI submitted a termination notice for its own role, which the clerks returned unsigned because it had failed to identify who would perform the termination afterward.