For years, a busy Silicon Valley startup called Mercor has been hiring an army of desperate job seekers — often including undereducated and underemployed experts — to train AI models so they can be replaced in the workforce.
This is a serious aspect of an AI-dominated future in which the business world is constantly pushing for automation, in the hope that it will stop relying on annoying and expensive human labor once and for all.
As mit tech review reportsA similar strange situation is now happening in China. Workers told the publication that their bosses are directing them to painstakingly document their workflows with the ultimate goal of automating specific tasks using AI agents, such as OpenClaw, an open-source piece of software that has become extremely popular in the country.
Chinese workers have already got an early glimpse of what an AI agent-led future might look like. A GitHub project is called peer skillsWhat was originally set up as a joke went viral on Chinese social media. It works by taking in a specific co-worker’s chat history and profile details, then automatically spits out a workplace manual that describes their actions in amazing detail.
AI-related layoffs in the tech industry reportedly inspired the tool’s creator, Tianyi Zhou. But while it was intended to poke fun at this trend, the tool also sparked heated debate over the future of human agency and dignity.
“It’s surprisingly good,” said Amber Li, a Shanghai-based tech worker. mit tech Of software. “It also picks up on the person’s little quirks, like how they react and their punctuation habits.”
This is a relevant topic in the country given the recent frenzy surrounding OpenClave. The proliferation of countless agents increased so rapidly this year Government agencies and state-owned enterprises started warning their employees Do not install the software on your devices, citing cybersecurity risks including leaks and accidental deletion of data.
While businesses are encouraged to pursue automation, streamline workflows, and standardize systems, employees are surprisingly much less receptive.
Some have even started creating tools to disrupt the creation of AI agents to replace human workers mit tech.
“I originally wanted to write an op-ed, but decided it would be more useful to create something that was against it,” AI product manager Koki Ju, who created a tool that rewrites worker manuals in nonverbal language, told the outlet.
While researchers continue to debate how effective AI agents will actually be at replacing human workers wholesale, employees are pushing to be part of the discussion regardless.
“I believe it is important to keep up with these trends so that we (employees) can participate in shaping the way they are used,” Xu said.
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