Meta Laid Off Staff in Favour of Agentic Coding, and It Is Not Going Well

Katie Paul and Courtney Rozen, Reuters: Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged shortcomings in the company’s sweeping restructuring at an internal town hall on Thursday, saying the systems known as AI agents had not progressed as quickly as he had expected, according to a recording heard by Reuters. […] In retrospect, he said, the “trajectory of the agentic development over at least the last four months hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected,” and ​that the company’s bets on the new structure “haven’t come to fruition yet.” Zuckerberg was referring to AI agents, automated systems that can ​execute tasks on behalf of a user. A quintessentially Zuckerbergian premise: he pivots the whole company around whatever is the new thing, says oops, then reminds himself that nothing really matters as long as people keep looking at ads on Instagram. For all Meta’s power and its massive base of users and ad buyers, the company’s YouTube channels are fascinating places. The…