Uncanny Valley | WIRED
Why Is Meta In Crisis?; Google Search’s Makeover; AI Gets Booed by Graduates
21 May 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to Wired's Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoe Schiffer, Director of Business and Industry.
I'm Brian Barrett, Executive Editor.
And I'm Leah Feiger, Director of Politics and Science.
And we're all in the same room. Oh my gosh!
For the first time.
Same room.
Brian got invited to the group chat. He did. Look at that. Today on the show, we're discussing the complete meltdown over mass layoffs at Meta. We spoke to more than a dozen employees, and it turns out the job cuts are far from the only reason why Meta employees are really going through it.
And of course, we wouldn't skip the Elon Musk verdict. He lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI in really as full a way as you can, as dramatically as possible. I know, Zoe, you're looking forward to talking about that. And I'm looking forward to talking about Google's annual developer conference, I.O., where it debuted some dramatic changes to search.
And you might have seen that Google's former CEO, Eric Schmidt, recently got booed by graduating students after he praised AI in a commencement speech.
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Chapter 2: What are the reasons behind Meta's recent layoffs?
We're gonna get into why young adults might be using AI, but they have very complicated feelings about it. And later in the show, we're gonna hear about why women married to AI bros have had enough.
So first up, let's dive into what is happening at Meta. This week, the company is letting go of roughly 10% of its workforce, which is about 8,000 employees total. It's the latest round of job cuts, adding to the roughly 25,000 jobs that have been cut in the past few years as part of Mark Zuckerberg's kind of
year of efficiency that started in 2023, and now the latest AI forward workplace, which he is trying to develop and impose.
And while these latest cuts are not as big as some of the rounds of layoffs that have already happened, they're getting a ton of attention because Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO, has said that the reason they're happening, in part at least, in large part, is because the company is spending so much money on AI and data centers.
So we record this on a Tuesday, but the reason we're able to talk so fully about this, constantly about this, is because Meta announced this a while ago.
Oh, yeah. They didn't announce it.
The news leaked. The news leaked, but then they acknowledged it.
Weeks and weeks later.
Yes, but still, it's been a long time. It's been a long time. That this has been out in the open, which has resulted in, I think, a little bit of chaos time inside of Meta because you've got like a, what, a one in 10 chance of not having your job anymore.
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Chapter 3: How is Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI related to AI's impact?
It's, I mean, suffice to say, impacting morale in really horrific ways. But it's not the only thing. Like we said, Mark Zuckerberg is also really encouraging employees to use AI. There have been all of these changes internally to that end. Some people really like it and are adopting it. Some people are really pushing back on it.
But I think for a lot of employees who joined Meta during this era of, like, endless perks, lots of job security, kind of like a – pillar atmosphere compared to some of the other startups in the Valley.
Rest and vest.
Chapter 4: What major changes were announced at Google's annual developer conference?
They had that going for a while.
I mean, kind of.
It wasn't full Google, but I feel like it was somewhat there. It had that vibe. I think, to me, someone so on the outside of this in every single way, I know about these layoffs because they've been, A, so chaotic, but B, in some ways, needlessly so. Not to say that other tech companies aren't firing scores of workers all the time. That feels like something we discuss on this podcast forever.
Chapter 5: Why are recent graduates expressing frustration with AI?
But this is happening with such a large runway and in a way that's making employees feel so terrible about themselves.
Well, because it's not just the layoffs, right? It's also even if you stay there, if you're not culled from the herd, you are going to have to deal with this world in which you've got spyware on your laptops. Oh, yeah. Training AI to probably take your job at some point, right? I mean, explain that a little bit.
So they announced, Meta announced, and this was more public, that they were going to put software on employee laptops that would monitor their keystrokes and how they move their cursors and basically how they do their job as Meta engineers and use that as training data for their own internal models to try to make their AI models better because they're running out of other sources.
Could you opt out of that, Brian?
You could not. Zoe, that's a great question. I'm so glad you asked. You could not opt out.
I felt like you didn't know the answer to that one.
In fact, when an employee asked in a very public forum within Meta, hey, could we not do this? Zoe, the response was?
Oh, absolutely. You're going to do this. And shame on you for asking. And some of the employees who are staying, actually thousands of the employees who are staying are getting drafted into the AI ranks. We published a piece today that was kind of about the morale inside the company, but also how there's been this mad dash to use up perks and stipends that employees have.
But one of the things that said at the end was that remaining employees are being asked to like join AI teams. So whatever your job was previously, they're calling internally like getting drafted. You're getting drafted into the AI ranks.
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Chapter 6: How is AI affecting employee morale at Meta?
Now your job is gonna look quite different.
That's like 7,000 people.
I've actually heard people use the word raptured.
Oh, my God.
And I wish we had that in the story. I'm so sorry. But like raptured into other teams. All of a sudden, one day, they've just disappeared. After this, after this layoff, has Zuckerberg and co. proposed like a sort of coherent leadership plan or proposal? Like what happens after this?
This is the confusing thing, according to employees I have talked to, because the tough thing about what's happening right now is that Meta is actually experiencing record or near record profits and revenue growth. Like the company is doing exceptionally well, but the company is not doing exceptionally well because of artificial intelligence.
I talked to employees who are on Instagram and they say, look, our main competitor is TikTok. TikTok's not an AI company. So in fact, you're trying to index on this thing that's really not at all why we're printing money and now you're laying a bunch of us off because of that thing when actually we're doing our jobs quite well because, again, the company's printing money.
Yeah, and there seems to be sort of a little bit, I think our reporting has shown, a little bit of like mission drift within the company, right? Yeah. And you've seen that not just with AI. You've seen that, I think, for a long time when you see this $80 billion bet or whatever it was on the metaverse and then saying, oh, never mind, here's this new shiny thing. AI is not another metaverse.
AI, I think, has a better business case behind it. But at the same time, to your point, it's not right now. It's not making money.
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of AI on job security and workplace dynamics?
Acted like I had a head growing out of my neck, a second head growing out of my neck, like I was suggesting the most insane thing in the world. Before we talk about Google I.O., why? Why?
I have my own reasons. I'm curious what Zoe's are. Yeah, it's boring. Okay, good. Yes, moving on. I feel funky sometimes when we're being spoon-fed news by these tech companies or by the U.S.
government or by whatever entity we're reporting on, which isn't to say that reporting on these very important changes to, I don't know, the world's largest and most impactful and powerful search engine isn't entirely valuable. But is it something that I want to speak about in this sacred space of the podcast?
I guess what I would say is, as with anything, we don't transcribe what they say at these events. We put them in proper context and do the reporting to back it up. We have a great team of gear reporters. Without a doubt. Who do phenomenal work and did phenomenal work today.
Without a doubt. In full love and support of them.
So I appreciate where you come from, but you're both wrong. He's our boss, so we're going to say. Here's why. Google search is changing more than it ever has. They are, think of search now instead of as a search box. It's been drifting this way. Like it's no longer 10 links, but it's not even like even one link now. Google search is now like basically a chat bot.
Like, it's a conversational query. Like, it'll expand where you put in, like, hey, what do you think, Google? Should I do this? Whatever. And it'll not just show you sort of text necessarily. It'll also show you an interactive graphic that it just cooked up. Oh, wow. It'll show you different, like, it'll...
Instead of saying, I want to go to Google Images for this, it'll be like, here's your images. And also, here's this. That's phase one. Phase two is going to be agentic search. So that means you go to Google and you say, hey, let me know. The example they gave was something to the effect of, let me know when my favorite celebrities are dropping new shoe collabs. Mm-hmm.
And that's it, and you're done. Google agents will then, AI agents, will then monitor the web for you. They will do the searching for you, and they will send you a notification through your Google app that says, hey, this thing just dropped that you're looking for. The idea is not only that you're not going to visit websites anymore because it's all going to be within Google.
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