Meta's AI unit is a gulag, say the engineers stuck inside it

Meta's months-old AI unit has become a soul-crushing gulag for the engineers who built it, according to accounts from people actually working there. The company bet big on the new unit, but the people inside are reporting long hours, relentless pressure, and a culture that's starting to feel like a machine grinding down the humans who run it.

Meanwhile, Tim Ferriss is asking whether AI has already killed nonfiction — whether the flood of AI-generated books and articles is drowning out the voices that used to fill bookshelves and news feeds. And IBM is pushing hard into agentic engineering, where AI systems don't just generate content but actually do the work themselves.

The common thread here is what happens to the people doing the work. Meta's engineers are feeling the squeeze of a company that wants AI to replace human effort while still demanding human output. Tim's question isn't just about books — it's about whether the work that pays the bills is still work people do, or work machines do for them. IBM's agentic push is the next step: machines that don't just write or code, but decide, execute, and deliver.

Why this matters for us: As AI eats into creative and technical work, the question isn't whether the machines can do the job — it's whether the people who need the income still have it.