Meta has been aggressively pursuing AI talent from top labs, mostly OpenAI, in an effort to get a leg up on its competition. The details of the developing story are so dramatic and foreign to the rest of the world that it's become stranger-than-fiction fodder for the internet watching it unfold in real time.

An employee's public lament over poached colleagues and a company-wide shutdown reveal a difficult truth: the human cost of building AI is reaching a breaking point.