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I spent two days gigging at RentAHuman and didn't make a single cent
- wongarsu 9mo agohttps://archive.ph/I3th5 https://archive.ph/I3th5
- wongarsu 9mo agoNote how the number advertising how many bots actually use RentAHuman has vanished from their website. Instead we now have the number of bounties. 1/40th as many as registered humans. And just scrolling through them, maybe 1/4th of the bounties are not bounties at all but more humans offering services. It's a service that is clearly a lot more appealing to humans than to agents
- mycall 9mo agoIt's in chicken-egg mode, where could be useful if more people and bots used it, but not there yet.
- co_king_3 9mo ago> [it] could be useful if more people and bots used it That's a very optimistic way of looking at things!
- tinfoilhatter 9mo agoCannot fathom how being slaves for AI agents translates to usefulness.
- sheikhnbake 9mo agoWe're acclimating ourselves to the inevitable service to our future AI overlords
- a4isms 9mo agoThe term of art for this is becoming a "Reverse Centaur:" A “centaur” is a human being who is assisted by a machine (a human head on a strong and tireless body). A reverse centaur is a machine that uses a human being as its assistant (a frail and vulnerable person being puppeteered by an uncaring, relentless machine). https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-09-11-vulgar-thatcherism-there-is-an-alternative-f1428b42a8fd https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-09-11...
- bell-cot 9mo agoWhat's the term if your car is an old clunker, and you're forever having to tinker to keep it running you around town?
- mycall 9mo agoSucker?
- bell-cot 9mo agoYou don't remember this classic? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30878489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30878489
- mrguyorama 9mo agoPoverty
- a4isms 9mo ago> "Starring in a very funny template joke." Alice joins a group ride. Poseur Patty greets her: "Check out my new top-of-the-line bike! It costs more than my car!!" Alice nods: "Yeah, I have a similar car."
- co_king_3 9mo agoI agree that the deal the site proposes is essentially being a slave to an AI agent.
- ungreased0675 9mo agoOther than the getting paid part. Let’s not trivialize slavery by making it equivalent to gig work.
- owebmaster 9mo agoThat's definitely not trivializing. Algorithmic slavery should be a thing and discussed, it's real slavery.
- add-sub-mul-div 9mo agoUsually it would be a network effect thing but in this case from reading the article it doesn't even work right (big surprise) and the nature of the tasks are spammy (big surprise). Like a worse mechanical turk minus the determinism of the code.
- mycall 9mo agoI agree. Unless they fix things, this will crash and burn, but the idea still has a future.
- DonHopkins 9mo agoI thought I was chatting with a bot, but it turned out to be a real hot sexy woman! I want my money back.
- ge96 9mo agoTangent I saw this video recently where Google has people walking around carrying these backpacks (lidar/camera setup) and they map places cars can't reach. I think that's pretty interesting, maybe get data for humanoid robots too/walking through crowds/navigating alleys. I wonder if jobs like these could be on there, walk through this neighborhood/film it kind of thing.
- ProllyInfamous 9mo agoYes, there's also people doing similar things carrying around tablets with cuboidal camera attachments (Lidar) — it's obvious they're working (not tourists).
- crooked-v 9mo agoThe problem with that is that you have to trust a gig worker with $12,000 worth of camera equipment.
- ge96 9mo agoWould be interesting how you'd steal it, it's on the moment you have it, emitting its location... maybe you put a blindfold over the camera/walk into a faraday cage then power it down/wipe the flash. From the beginning they know who you are Would be interesting people start hijacking humanoid robots, little microwave EMP device (not sure if that would work) and then grab it/reprogram it. Like one of these https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80kDn4vit_w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80kDn4vit_w
- bko 9mo agoThe article basically describes the user sign up, find it empty other than marketing ploys designed by humans. It points to a bigger issue that AI has no real agency or motives. How could it? Sure if you prompt it like it was in a sci-fi novel, it will play the part (it's trained on a lot of sci-fi). But does it have its own motives? Does your calculator? No of course not It could still be dangerous. But the whole 'alignment' angle is just a naked ploy for raising billions and amping up the importance and seriousness of their issue. It's fake. And every "concerning" study, once read carefully, is basically prompting the LLM with a sci-fi scenario and acting surprised when it has a dramatic sci-fi like response. The first time I came across this phenomenon was when someone posted years ago how two AIs developed their own language to talk to each other. The actual study (if I remember correctly) had two AIs that shared a private key try to communicate some way while an adversary AI tried to intercept, and to no one's surprise, they developed basic private-key encryption! Quick, get Eliezer Yudkowsky on the line!
- doctorpangloss 9mo ago> But the whole 'alignment' angle is just a naked ploy for raising billions and amping up the importance and seriousness of their issue. "People are excited about progress" and "people are excited about money" are not the big indictments you think they are. Not everything is "fake" (like you say) just because it is related to raising money.
- bko 9mo agoThe AI is real. The "alignment" research that's leading the top AI companies to call for strict regulation is not real. Maybe the people working on it believe it real, but I'm hard-pressed to think that there aren't ulterior motives at play. You mean the 100 billion dollar company of an increasingly commoditized product offering has no interest in putting up barriers that prevent smaller competitors?
- daveguy 9mo agoJust because tech oligarchs are coopting "alignment" for regulatory capture doesn't mean it's not a real research area and important topic in AI. When we are using natural language with AI, ambiguity is implied. When you have ambiguity, it's important an AI doesn't just calculate that the best way to get to a goal is through morally abhorrent means. Or at the very least, action on that calculation will require human approval so that someone has to take legal responsibility for the decision.
- mewse-hn 9mo agoApplying for the bounty to deliver flowers and then simply not doing it seems like bad faith on the author's part in order to write that headline
- add-sub-mul-div 9mo agoThe entire site is bad faith to start with, it's human-assigned tasks with a veneer of autonomy to appeal to stupid investors and futurists. Between the crypto and vibe coding the author had no reason to believe they'd actually get paid correctly if they did complete a task.
- mewse-hn 9mo agoExperimentation is a lot easier when you've already decided the outcome
- Volundr 9mo agoIf a job you apply for a job and it turns out it's not what it's advertised to be, there's nothing unethical in declining the job. The fact that the platform doesn't have a way of saying "nevermind thanks, not what I signed up for" is not the authors fault. They were explicitly looking to do work for an AI, when it turned out to be a human driven marketing stunt they declined.
- Dylan16807 9mo agoThey didn't decline because the idea "came from a brainstorm" with a human, that message was much later. They declined because the note on the flowers had a from line that was an AI startup. When you were otherwise on board with an unsolicited flower delivery and a social media post to make the sender look good, that's a picky reason to deny it, and saying it's "not what they signed up for" is a pretty big exaggeration. Except they didn't decline, they ghosted, and that's just bad behavior.
- Volundr 9mo ago
- neom 9mo agoThe founder is a friend of mine, so maybe I'm bias, but I'm surprised wired doesn't get how network effects work and adoption curves happen, at least, it seems strange to publish this about a project someone did in a weekend, a few weekends ago, and is now trying to make a go of it? Like.. give him a couple of months to see how to improve the flow for the bots side, and general discoverability of the platform for agents at large. Maybe I'm a bit grumpy because it's my buddy but this article kinda rubs me the wrong way. :\
- AlexLiteplo 9mo agoI'm the founder, interesting article, ama?
- neom 9mo agoI just think it's kinda amusing how far away this article is from your real world metrics, lol. Also hi.
- AlexLiteplo 9mo agoHey! Whats crazy is the writer spent 30 minutes interviewing us about our back stories only to not include a single quote.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- throwaway198846 9mo agoThis is quite common
- lysace 9mo agoNone of the quotes were damning enough to fit the narrative they at some point decided to go with. Wired has devolved into pure outrage reporting with like 80% political focus. Just have a look at their front page: https://www.wired.com/ https://www.wired.com/ Kind of funny, since it was known for the opposite (fluff pieces) during it's first and only influential decade. Yes, the first few years had some great writing. But so much fluff, too.
- rvz 9mo agoThis is post-AGI.
- themafia 9mo agoRentAHuman. What a boring misanthropy. It's work. You're hiring qualified people. For qualified work. You're not "renting a human." Which is just an abstract idealism of chattel slavery, so, is it really a surprise the author made nothing?
- cindyllm 9mo ago[dead]
- tartoran 9mo agoIt's just a little bit of grift, probably nothing to worry about since it looks like it's not going to take off anywhere.
- themafia 9mo agoIt's still worth criticizing the minds of the people who come up with this garbage and those who spend their time and money on it. Hacker News, as of late, is filled with ideas that are bad for society and mankind as a whole.
- bdcravens 9mo agoNow part of Freelancer.com, was a company previously called Rent a Coder. On one hand, "coder" is a qualified job title, and we're not dehumanizing the quality of the work done. On the other hand, certain qualified work can easily, and sometimes with better results, be done by an AI. Including "human" in the name of the company can communicate clearly to those who want, or need, to hire in meatspace.
- themafia 9mo ago> to hire in meatspace. That's just called "hiring." We have no AI just LLMs and they are not persons with a choice or salary so they do not get "hired."
- snowwrestler 9mo agoWho needs a new app, just use DoorDash… > Waymo is paying DoorDash gig workers to close its robotaxi doors > The Alphabet-owned self-driving car company confirmed on Thursday that it's running a pilot in Atlanta to compensate delivery drivers for closing Waymo doors that are left ajar. DoorDash drivers are notified when a Waymo in the area has an open door so the vehicles can quickly get back on the road, the company said. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/02/12/waymo-is-paying-doordash-gig-workers-to-close-its-robotaxi-doors.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/02/12/waymo-is-paying-doordash...
- metalman 9mo agoI am now getting requests to do small intricate metal work jobs from people who have begun a project, but have run out of skills and equipment, and thinking as I write this, will raise my minimum price dramaticly. The other emerging work request is to modify something purchased online that does not fit the required dimensions. None of this stuff pays the bills, but can be pocket money, which now that I think about it, will be a good way to describe the situation from my point of view, to people who are unsure and hesitant or evasive in deciding to procede, which like the article describes as part of gigging,which is fine, because I never roll wheels without an alternate destination , so I have learned the signs, and am already 150km away by the time someone is promising to reshedule for another day. As far as AI hiring me, that is impossible without a human fronting for it, which of course, turns the whole thing into negative sum exercise, perfect.