Project OT: plan to have AI agents do much of the daily work of thousands of employees, with small human teams overseeing them

What happened

Reuters reported that Meta started Project OT in January 2026 to become AI native, including scenarios that cut some teams by up to 60% and handed their work to AI agents. After a first round of layoffs in May, Zuckerberg canceled the second wave. Internal posts cited by Reuters showed AI agents making large, disruptive changes, a 40% rise in major technical and security incidents, and up to 70% more time spent fixing them. Meta says it never planned to act on every scenario.

Sources

• Mark Zuckerberg had a bold plan to replace Meta staff with AI. Here's how it imploded. (Reuters)
• AI agents meant to replace Meta workers made large-scale, disruptive actions (Ars Technica)
• Companies rushed in on AI. Now some are pulling back (The Guardian)