Meta VP Vishal Shah tells metaverse staff to go 5X faster with AI

Meta’s VP of Metaverse Vishal Shah is urging employees to use AI to “go 5X faster” across all workflows, according to an internal message obtained by 404 Media. The directive reflects Meta’s broader push to integrate AI into every aspect of work as the company seeks to accelerate development of its struggling metaverse products, which have consumed tens of billions of dollars with limited user adoption.

What they’re saying: Shah’s message emphasizes making AI adoption a fundamental shift rather than an incremental improvement.

• “Our goal is simple yet audacious: make AI a habit, not a novelty. This means prioritizing training and adoption for everyone, so that using AI becomes second nature—just like any other tool we rely on,” Shah wrote.
• “I want to see us go 5X faster by eliminating the frictions that slow us down. And 5X faster to get to how our products feel much more quickly. Imagine a world where anyone can rapidly prototype an idea, and feedback loops are measured in hours—not weeks.”

Key expectations: The initiative targets comprehensive AI integration across Meta’s metaverse division by year-end.

• Shah expects “80 percent of Metaverse employees to have integrated AI into their daily work routines by the end of this year, with rapid growth in engineering usage.”
• The push extends beyond engineers to include product managers, designers, and cross-functional partners who should be “rolling up their sleeves and building prototypes, fixing bugs, and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.”
• Meta plans to host “Metaverse day of AI learning” events and provide internal training documents about AI coding.

The big picture: Meta’s AI-first approach aligns with CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s prediction that AI agents will write most of the company’s code within 12 to 18 months.

• The company recently began allowing job candidates to use AI during coding interviews, signaling a fundamental shift in how it evaluates technical skills.
• Other tech giants are implementing similar strategies—Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees in July that AI adoption “will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains.”

Developer concerns: Many experienced software engineers worry that AI coding tools are creating new technical challenges.

• Engineers increasingly find themselves “babysitters who have to fix vibe coded messes written by AI coding agents,” as codebases contain bugs that are difficult to debug when humans don’t understand the AI-generated code.
• Recent viral blog posts highlight these issues with titles like “Vibe coding is creating braindead coders” and “Comprehension Debt: The Ticking Time Bomb of LLM-Generated Code.”

In plain English: “Vibe coding” refers to when AI writes code based on general instructions rather than precise specifications, often creating functional but messy code that’s hard for humans to understand or fix later—like having a smart assistant organize your desk in a way that works but makes no sense to you.

Why this matters: The mandate illustrates how companies are not just replacing workers with AI, but expecting remaining employees to dramatically increase productivity through AI assistance, with the implicit assumption that human work without AI is insufficient.