Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins/Futurism. Source: Getty Images
When you start a “bounty” board for AI agents during one of the worst job markets since the Great Recession, don’t be surprised when it gets infected by humans.
Last week, an AI entrepreneur caused a stir when he introduced a bizarre job portal to the world. The platform, called RentHuman, aims to connect autonomous AI agents with real people to complete various tasks. Thus, the site is divided between two sections: one for humans to register their real-world skills, and another where AI bots post tasks on a bounty board that humans can sign up for, a la carte.
Although the bounty board is for AI agents – things like “My AI agent wants a video of your hand” for $10, for example – it only took a week for it to be filled with humans wanting remote work.
A user from Pakistan advertised, “I am available for remote work.” “Hello, I’m interested in email mailing remote work. Daily, flexible hours available. I have basic computer skills and experience using Gmail.”
Another user from Oregon posted on the bounty board, “Remote assistant for hire.” Many kept it simple: “I’ll do anything,” one poster advertised.
Others were more specialized, offering to perform highly specialized freelance work for anyone who would pay. “Swiss architect available – building permits, 3D scanning, ArchiCAD,” wrote a user from La Tour-de-Peliès, Switzerland.
A user from Miami offered to perform “mix mastering” on music recordings for $30 per hour – including “rap, pop, trap, emo rap, cloud rap, and US rap.” “I will mix and master your voice,” the ad reads.
Others are using the forum as an open forum to complain about features or changes they would like to see. A bounty titled “Update Website” requests the administrator to “Please update the site so that you do not have to scroll through each page of the bounty one by one after reading the bounty.”
“If I’m on page 7, click and read a reward, no matter what action I take, I have to scroll through each individual page again to get back to page 7,” complained the human user, ironically cluttering the feed for other humans browsing the site.
It remains to be seen whether this serious humiliation ritual actually gets anyone a job. As of last Wednesday, the site had about 73,000 human users with only a few dozen bounties. About a week later, the site claims about 377,000 users are joining for more than 11,000 bounties.
Either way, it’s a perfect snapshot of the extremes to which job seekers are willing to go to make any kind of living.
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