Feb. 4 (UPI) — Two engineers for the Pinterest site no longer are employed after creating a software tool to track the company’s downsizing effort amid its increased use of artificial intelligence.
Pinterest Chief Executive Officer Bill Ready on Jan. 27 said about 700 workers — equal to less than 15% of its workforce — were to be fired while the company adopts an “AI-forward approach.” The firings are expected to occur through September.
“Healthy debate and dissent are expected,” Ready told workers during a company meeting. “That’s how we make our decisions, but there’s a clear line between constructive debate and behavior that’s obstructionist.”
The San Francisco-based tech firm did not identify which workers and internal departments would be affected, so the two fired engineers wrote a software script to track the firings.
“Two engineers wrote custom scripts improperly accessing confidential company information to identify the locations and names of all dismissed employees and then shared it more broadly,” a Pinterest spokesperson told The Guardian.
“This was a clear violation of Pinterest policy and of their former colleagues’ privacy,” the spokesperson said.
The engineers were fired after they shared instructions with coworkers on how to use the newly created tool to learn which workers had been fired.
Some Pinterest staff deny that the engineers created a new software tool and instead said the tool is available for any Pinterest employee to use, CNBC reported.
Pinterest has invested in AI integration to enable users to produce content that it says is more unique and personalized.
A more-than-20% decrease in Pinterest’s share value this year reflects investors’ concerns about growing threats from competing platforms that have integrated AI.
Other tech firms are making similar moves include Meta, which fired more than 1,000 workers while integrating AI with wearable products and mobile phone apps.
Design software firm Autodesk also plans to fire about 1,000 workers.