Surveillance in the name of AI: Meta has decided to record every click of its employees

Meta Platforms has installed on the computers of its employees in the United States a program that allows tracking mouse movements, clicks and keystrokes, Reuters has found out. According to the agency, the company's management justifies the introduction of such monitoring software into the business process by the need to develop intelligent systems capable of automating office work - from writing code to managing corporate software.

A tracker program called Model Capability Initiative (MCI) will work in corporate applications and websites, as well as periodically take screenshots of employees, Reuters writes with reference to a memo published on April 21 in the channel of Meta SuperIntelligence Labs, a team of AI developers. The memo states that the purpose of implementing MCI is to improve Meta's own neural networks. This applies to areas where it is still difficult for AI to replicate human-PC interaction, such as selecting contextual menu items and using hotkeys, it said.

Meta spokesman Andy Stone confirmed to Reuters the fact of information collection through MCI. He assured that the information obtained will be used exclusively for training artificial intelligence, and the company does not intend to use the collected information to evaluate the performance of staff or any other incidental purposes. Stone also said that there are measures in place to protect "confidential content", but did not specify what types of data would not be recorded, the article said.

The introduction of the utility has caused sharp dissatisfaction among Meta employees, according to internal correspondence obtained by Business Insider (BI). In the working network under the official announcement of the innovation, the most popular comment was: "I am extremely unpleasant. How can we give up on this?" At the same time, the most frequent reaction to this management publication was an emoticon with an angry face.

Meta technical director Andrew Bosworth responded to outraged colleagues directly in the discussion thread, "There is no way to opt out on your work laptop." Meta staff reacted to the top manager's comment with crying, shocked and angry emoji. According to BI's source, Meta employees' work devices have been monitored for a long time, and people are warned about this even when they are hired. Therefore, the forced installation of the monitoring tool was likely just an extension of existing rules, and the surveillance is limited to Gmail, GChat, Metamate's AI assistant and other frequently used work apps.

Historically, companies have resorted to monitoring computers to detect misconduct or employee distractions for personal matters, notes Ifeoma Ajunwa, a law professor at Yale University. Keystroke tracking takes this data collection to a new level, she says. Office workers are now subject to the same real-time tracking as couriers and those employed in the gig economy (a model of work where businesses don't employ staff but outsource project work). In the US, where there are no restrictions on employee surveillance, it is not against the law, Ajunwa emphasizes (quoted by Reuters).

However, in Europe, such corporate activity monitoring is likely to be strictly prohibited, suggested Valerio De Stefano, Professor of Law at York University in Toronto. The expert emphasized that the introduction by employers of the practice of monitoring personnel actions will almost certainly be qualified as a violation of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor