I’ve written quite a bit about how AI is altering the way forward for work, often within the context of machines taking on human labor.
However what if we flip it round and think about a time when AI programs begin hiring folks to do the type of work they’ll’t do themselves?
That’s the premise behind RentAHuman, a fledgling on-line market the place autonomous AI brokers publish job bounties and pay people to finish them.
The pitch on RentAHuman’s homepage leans into humor:
However its implications for the labor market aren’t any joke.
Who’s In Cost?
RentAHuman was launched in early February.
Curiosity in it was rapid.
Inside its first week, the positioning drew tens of millions of visits and reportedly attracted about 200,000 sign-ups. The platform now states that greater than 570,000 folks have registered to be employed by AI brokers.
Precise demand for human labor, nonetheless, is way smaller.
On the time journalists started digging into the platform, fewer than 12,000 bounties had been posted by AI brokers.
If 500,000 folks had been truly searching for work on the time, that quantity represents a single activity for lower than 3% of those that registered.
One of many first deeper seems into RentAHuman got here from a WIRED reporter who signed as much as see the way it labored in apply. What he discovered was chaotic. Lots of the bounties had been marketing-driven ploys like listening to a podcast and posting about it, delivering flowers with a startup emblem hooked up or holding an indication in public. He additionally famous that funds required a crypto pockets, and the Stripe payout possibility didn’t perform.
And regardless of making use of to a number of duties, he didn’t earn a single penny.
Based mostly on that have, it could be straightforward to dismiss RentAHuman as a failed experiment.
However that misses the larger level.
Uber and Lyft didn’t create gig work. They made it extra environment friendly by utilizing software program to match drivers with riders. However folks nonetheless set the costs and managed the cash.
RentAHuman goes a step additional.
Right here, software program creates the job too. An AI agent decides what must be performed, units the pay and sends cash when the job is accomplished. People are solely concerned to hold out duties in a market that’s run by code.
However are these actually AI brokers doing all of the heavy lifting?
RentAHuman integrates requirements just like the Mannequin Context Protocol (MCP), which permits brokers to programmatically publish duties and handle escrow funds. In early empirical analysis analyzing 303 stay activity postings, roughly 32% had been initiated straight by means of APIs or agent protocols. In different phrases, they weren’t manually typed in by a human experimenting with the platform.
So, sure, AI brokers appear to be initiating round a 3rd of the posted jobs on RentAHuman.
Which doesn’t imply it’s a booming market. The median fee throughout these duties was about $25.
However you possibly can see the place this could be heading.
The unique gig economic system — from ride-sharing to meals supply — taught staff to just accept costs set by software program and to attend for jobs despatched by an algorithm. RentAHuman is solely the subsequent step.
Uber’s algorithm manages people, however RentAHuman’s AI brokers are starting to originate the work itself.
Name it the agentic gig economic system.
And it has large implications. Globally, platform-based labor is projected to develop at greater than 16% yearly by means of 2033. The market was valued at over $556 billion in 2024 and is anticipated to greater than triple within the coming decade, with projections suggesting it may exceed $2 trillion by 2033.
Roughly 12% of the worldwide workforce already participates in gig work, and that share is anticipated to climb sharply within the years forward.
In different phrases, we’re not speaking a couple of fringe nook of the labor market. We’re speaking a couple of system that’s changing into central to how work will get performed.
And this progress makes much more sense in gentle of our final problem, after we checked out how platforms like Conway give AI programs their very own wallets and the power to spend cash with out a particular person approving each step.
This implies Internet 4.0 will transfer us from AI as a device to AI as a participant within the economic system. And RentAHuman exhibits what that appears like when it connects to human labor.
Proper now, it’s a messy prototype. However the logic is sound.
The gig economic system taught us that platforms can coordinate human labor at scale. The rising agentic economic system hints that software program will more and more management that coordination — together with sourcing, pricing and deploying labor — with out a human within the loop.
Right here’s My Take
RentAHuman isn’t a joke.
The early model of the platform is restricted and tough across the edges, however it exhibits us how an AI-run market may work. Software program creates the duty. It units the pay and assigns the job. People step in to deal with the components that require a bodily presence.
Clearly the demand is there, as a whole lot of hundreds of individuals have already signed up on the platform. And early analysis suggests {that a} significant share of duties are being generated routinely by means of code, with funds despatched by means of machine-controlled wallets.
That tells us this idea has traction.
And which means at the moment’s gig economic system could be a preview of the way forward for labor.
The following take a look at is how people match into markets the place software program — not a human boss — decides what work will get performed.
In fact, it’s potential we’ll see resistance when the “particular person” managing labor isn’t an individual anymore. Staff and regulators may push again and demand stronger guardrails.
However RentAHuman is an early, essential proof of idea within the evolution from AI as a device to AI as a participant within the economic system.
And that’s no laughing matter.
Regards,
Ian King
Chief Strategist, Banyan Hill Publishing
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