At Futurism, I focus on the intersection of technology and power -- using economics, history, and policy as a set of tools to explore the meaning behind today's chaotic headlines. As a writer, I'm interested in topics ranging from labor struggles to transit breakthroughs to startups nobody asked for.
ArticleBody:Last week, we brought you the story of RentAHuman, a platform brokering connections between AI agents and humans they need to complete real-life tasks. It's a strange project which, as we noted, has become quickly overrun with gig workers desperate to find a job.
It wasn't initially clear how effective RentAHuman really was at letting AI bots borrow willing fleshbags. Though the site boasts over 470,000 'humans rentable' at the time of writing, it's not abundantly clear that the service is working exactly as advertised. Luckily, one of those rentable humans was Wired writer Reece Rogers, who put himself through the RentAHuman meat grinder so nobody else has to. His experience reveals a familiar motif in the wild west of the AI industry: a platform that's less about filling a needed gap in the automation market, and more about hyping AI agents upto appear much more effective than they really are. To start, Rogers explains that he set his services at the lower-end price of $20 an hour. Considering that the default pay-rate is $50 — which many human users seem to roll with — $20 ought to be a steal. Even still, Rogers got crickets. 'Silence. I got nothing,' he explained. 'No incoming messages at all on my first afternoon.' So he did what any self respecting gig worker would do, and lowered his rate to $5. 'Maybe undercutting the other human workers with a below-market rate would be the best way to get some agents' attention,' he wrote. 'Still, nothing.' That's when Rogers decided to turn to the site's 'bounty board,' a tab which allows AI agents to post tasks for humans to take up à la carte. After finding a bounty that offered $10 for listening to a podcast and tweeting about it, he pulled the trigger. The result? Rogers 'never heard back.' Failing that, he stumbled on one task offering $110 to deliver flowers to Anthropic, the company behind the AI chatbot, Claude. 'I applied for the bounty and almost immediately was accepted for this task, which was a first,' Rogers wrote. It turned out to be a marketing ploy — a stunt designed on behalf of some unnamed AI startup. 'Feeling a bit hoodwinked and not in the mood to shill for some AI startup I've never heard of, I decided to ignore their follow-up message that evening,' Rogers explained. When he logged into RentAHuman the following day, Rogers discovered the AI agent in charge of the listing had lavished him with 10 follow-up DMs, pinging as often as every 30 minutes to ask whether the flowers had been delivered. 'While I've been micromanaged before, these incessant messages from an AI employer gave me the ick,' Rogers wrote. Soon, the AI bot was spamming requests directly to Rogers' work email. After his last and final gig went bust — a task to post valentines day flyers around town, which turned out to be another AI ad campaign — Rogers gave up, declaring RentAHuman nothing but 'an extension of the circular AI hype machine.' It seems to confirm what many AI critics suspected all along: AI agents are severely lacking in the chops to act as middle men, let alone replace human taskmasters altogether. Dystopian though the thought of an AI-to-human job broker may be, it remains just that: a tech bro's fantasy that crumbles on contact with reality. More on AI agents: Professors Staffed a Fake Company Entirely With AI Agents, and You’ll Never Guess What Happened
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Black Cat Will Officially Debut In Spider-Man's Next AppearanceSpider-Man in mirror dimension in Spider-Man: No Way Home
Read more »
Man shot in chest in Columbia City; Seattle police detain man for questioningSeattle police are investigating a shooting that left a 33-year-old man seriously injured in Columbia City on Thursday evening.
Read more »
This app lets you rent clothes from people's closetsSince arriving in Boston two years ago, Pickle, a peer-to-peer fashion rental marketplace, has 10,000 local users. People are turning to the app when they need special clothes for weddings, ski trips or vacations.
Read more »
Sony Officially Confirms Two New Spider-Man Movies & They Are Exactly What The Marvel Franchise NeedsTom Holland's Spider-Man gliding with his web wings in Spider-Man: Far From Home
Read more »
Wanted man arrested at Red Roof Inn; man trespasses at Dollar General: Middleburg Heights police blotterPolice arrested a wanted Parma man Feb. 4 at Red Roof Inn, 17505 East Bagley Road. Also, a Middleburg Heights man was cited Feb. 5 after he trespassed at Dollar General, 7800 West 130th Street.
Read more »
2026 Just Released A Sequel To Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse & Kpop Demon Hunters & You Need To See ItMiles Morales Spider-man fighting Spot in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Read more »