Inside Meta’s push to put robots to work in data centers
Dey took ‘er jerbs The company is testing robots on tasks that can performed by technicians. Credit: Getty Images Meta is testing robots that can plug in cables, reset servers, and handle other tasks inside its data centers, according to several current and former workers familiar with the projects.
Why It Matters
This story touches on meta, robots, inside — topics readers are actively tracking. Review and add editorial context before publishing.
Key Facts
- Fact 1: In one experiment, Meta is evaluating whether a Kinova Gen3 robotic arm could be used for power cycling or cutting off electricity to servers.
- Fact 2: One Meta data center worker estimates that if it’s successful, the bot could replace up to 80 percent of some people’s workloads.
- Fact 3: The company opened the facility in 2014 and has several years left of a property tax break that allows it to save tens of millions of dollars annually, which the city has viewed as a worthwhile trade-off for having its cachet upped by having Meta jobs.
Dey took ‘er jerbs The company is testing robots on tasks that can performed by technicians. Credit: Getty Images Meta is testing robots that can plug in cables, reset servers, and handle other tasks inside its data centers, according to several current and former workers familiar with the projects.
The ongoing effort, which has not been previously reported, may eventually allow Meta to operate its rapidly expanding data center footprint with fewer humans, keeping labor costs in check as its spending on AI infrastructure soars. Meta is using robots and related hardware from several different vendors, including Watney Robotics, Kinova, and ABB, according to the same workers, who asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media. Kinova and ABB declined to comment.
(Original synthesis pending human/AI review — generated by the stub provider by selecting real sentences from the source material, not by writing new analysis or commentary.)
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