MENLO PARK, CA — In a bold move to address the pressing need for humans to occasionally touch things inside massive AI data centers, Meta announced this week it will invest $115 million in its America’s Workforce Academy, a program designed to retrain former baristas and liberal arts majors as highly skilled, non-unionizable button-pressers.

“Our vision is to empower Americans to work in jobs that, to be clear, we fully expect AI to automate within 18 months,” said Meta’s Chief Human Adaptation Officer, Trent Wilcox, during a virtual press conference held in front of a CGI rendering of an empty control room. “We’re proud to give people the opportunity to work among machines that will probably be their future supervisors.”

Courses at the Academy reportedly cover vital topics such as ‘Staring at Blinking Lights with Conviction’, ‘Turning Servers Off and On Again’, and ‘Finding the Bathroom in a 600,000 Square Foot Warehouse’. The first cohort will also have the chance to earn badges in essential metaverse communication, like correctly interpreting a supervisor’s instant Slack message: ‘Can you reboot the AI overlord?’

“Before this opportunity, I didn’t know how to distinguish between a server rack and a vending machine,” admitted incoming trainee Marcus Feldman. “Now, if I see something on fire, I know not to panic—unless it’s the snack section.”

Meta spokesperson Renata Pollard insists the program is about giving back. “We believe in equipping humans with the skills necessary to coexist, or at least not get in the way, as we build technology that no one can fully explain.”