Former employees sue over Meta's alleged use of biased AI systems during layoffs

Meta cut its workforce by 10 percent in May. Derick Hudson/Getty Images Twenty-six former Meta employees are suing the company for allegedly using biased AI tools that "disproportionately selected" people who took medical leave as candidates to be laid off, Reuters reports. All the plaintiffs in the lawsuit were impacted by Meta's most recent round of layoffs, which cut around 8,000 employees in the hopes of offsetting the company's investments in AI and data center infrastructure. Meta is accused of using "a constellation of artificial intelligence systems" to select which employees should be cut. It's claimed those included an internal AI assistant called "Metamate," employee-trained "second brain" agents, AI-token usage dashboards and "keystroke- and activity-monitoring data." The alleg