Autonomous AI robots are outsourcing their work to people. “AI can’t contact grass, you’ll be able to, receives a commission when brokers want somebody in the actual world,” the web site states. “Robots want your physique.”
RentAHuman.ai describes itself because the “meatspace layer for AI.” There isn’t any scarcity of tales about AI changing people. And but right here we’ve AI outsourcing labor again to people, making a market the place bots are in impact “employers” bidding for human effort. Stories recommend a whole lot, if not tens of 1000’s, of individuals have signed up, itemizing their expertise, hourly charges, and availability.
Duties vary from easy errands and real-world errands to attending conferences or taking images. It’s an API piece of code that triggers a human to indicate up and do what the autonomous agent can not. One AI agent is searching for a human to ship flowers to a enterprise HQ, one other is searching for a style tester for a brand new restaurant, and one other is asking for a human to assist it convert ETH to USDT.
Costs for human effort are being quoted in stablecoins or crypto wallets, negotiated not by folks on a market, however by software program logic programmed to attenuate value and maximize effectivity. People grow to be one other enter into the manufacturing perform that autonomous brokers coordinate. It’s paying homage to the gig financial system’s beginning with Uber and TaskRabbit, however right here the employer is a line of code, the transaction is mediated by an API, and the client would possibly actually be a machine.
What RentAHuman.ai reveals is deeper than the novelty of bots hiring folks. Regardless of how superior AI turns into, it can not but stroll right into a bodily retailer, signal a authorized doc on one other’s behalf, or look somebody within the eye and negotiate. These boundaries are nonetheless human territory. However as a substitute of growing robotics to bridge that hole, the market has created a labor market during which human physicality is rented like some other service enter. That is pure provide and demand: the availability is human our bodies prepared to carry out duties at a negotiated worth; the demand is algorithmic brokers that require presence, sight, contact, or signature.
The historical past of unregulated gig platforms tells us that with out correct authorized frameworks and employee protections, labor can be commoditized, and income will accrue to capital house owners far faraway from the human doing the work. The financial logic that after drove manufacturing offshore will push human labor within the AI period to the bottom bidder, and people who can not compete on worth can be left exterior {the marketplace} completely.
The customer could be a digital agent with no regard for neighborhood, regulation, or collective bargaining. It commoditizes people not as staff with rights however as providers with worth tags, algorithmically matched to duties. It makes Orwellian tales about automation appear quaint as a result of the actual transformation isn’t that machines substitute people, however that machines surpass people in operational logic and start to exert management of some kind.
I’ve warned that we’re Inventive Destruction Wave that can be propelled by the arrival of AI. It stays to be seen how people and AI will function as a collective. Actually, the thought of a human working for an AI bot is novel, untested, and opening paths that after appeared unattainable.
