It would not be wrong to say that AI has come as a threat to people’s jobs, till now thousands of people have lost their jobs due to Artificial Intelligence. Many big companies, by investing heavily in AI, are turning their employees out of the company on a large scale. Now the situation is such that AI is also telling who will be targeted for layoff. Recently, a shocking case has come to light from Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook. The company has been accused of using AI to identify sick employees and then after finding out the sick employees fired them.
Targeted employees with the help of AI
A group of 26 Meta employees have sued the company, claiming that the company used unfair means to select people for layoff. artifical Intelligence Used the system and mostly targeted those who were on medical, parental or family leave.
These are among the 8,000 employees, approximately 10 percent of Meta’s workforce, who were laid off in May. The case, filed in federal court in Oakland, California, claims the company used internal AI systems, keystroke and activity-monitoring data, AI token-usage dashboards, and algorithm-assisted performance rankings, among other methods, to determine who would be fired.
Due to AI, a list was prepared of those people who were on leave due to illness or those employees whose output had reduced due to some disability. The case filed by the employees also alleges that Meta did not take into account protected leave when taking into account employees’ scores and did not pause the system for the individualized, leave and accommodation neutral review required by law. Apart from this, it has also been told that each of the 26 employees had taken protected leave and requested reasonable accommodation for disability. Although they have been informed of their layoff, all 26 employees will continue to work until July 22.
Employees say that some were pregnant and some had taken parental leave, during which they may not have worked and thus their output was reduced. Apart from this, some people took medical leave and one employee disclosed serious health condition and disability. After the manager warned him when he asked for leave that doing so would result in his name being selected for layoff, Meta did not offer any accommodation to the employee’s disability.
What does Meta say?
Meta said in a statement that the claims have no merit and are not based on facts. Workforce management and organizational decisions are taken by people, not AI. Almost half of the cases had taken leave for caregiving or pregnancy-related reasons. There are eight women who took maternity or pregnancy-related leave, four men who took parental leave and one woman who took bereavement leave to care for a family member and later on.
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