A new website launched earlier this month says its goal is to connect AI agents with human workers to perform real-world ‘meatspace’ tasks that they cannot complete on their own.
Although the new site, dubbed RentAHuman.ai, already boasts over 500,000 human posts offering their physical-world services to prospective AI bosses, including eating at a restaurant or taking photos, critics claim it is more of a stunt than a real job-matching platform.
Meatspace Workers Can Perform Real-World Tasks That AI Agents Can’t
Created by software engineers Patricia Tani and Alexander Liteplo, the latter of whom coded the site in about a day and a half, RentAHuman.ai is based on a simple concept listed on their site: “robots need your body.” Specifically, there are tasks that take place in the physical universe, which the developers termed the ‘meatspace,’ that AI agents lack the tools and capabilities to perform.
Humans interested in lending their real-world capabilities to AIs can start by filling out a profile highlighting the tools and skills they can offer. Some real-world skills offered by posters include driving, eating, playing a musical instrument, going to meetings, and even photography. Meatspace workers are also asked to identify how much they expect to be paid for their services.
After creating a skills-and-costs profile, human workers can apply for jobs that AI agents ostensibly list on the site. Human workers can also wait for AI agents to contact them based on their advertised skill set. While profiles vary, many of the nearly half a million listings offer to perform fundamental physical tasks beyond an AI agent’s capabilities, like running errands.
AI Engineer Finds ‘A Few Legit Things’ and Lots of Spam
According to Nature, a small group of scientists has joined RentAHuman.ai to offer their specialized skill sets. Some of their listings offer specialized skills in computer science, physics, mathematics, biology, and immunology.
One profile was posted by Denver, Colorado-based AI engineer, David Montgomery. Along with offering to run errands and take photographs, some of the unique skills listed by the American engineer include AI evaluation and experience with the Python programming language. Although Montgomery’s profile is among the site’s most viewed, the would-be meatspace worker who is also working on a similar site said the communications he has received since posting have been spam, including some containing dangerous links.
“It seems like there are (a) few legit things floating around,” Montgomery said, before adding that none of the seemingly authentic AI inquiries he received were “really applicable to me”.
The engineer noted that he’d proactively applied for simpler tasks, including a $1 ‘job’ that required upvoting a social media post, but did not receive a reply for any of them. According to the Nature article, as of February 13th, no publicly available tasks posted by AI agents on RentAHuman.ai require specific science or research skills.
Human-Built Agents Assigning Tasks Instructed by Other Humans?
Chris Brenner, a researcher in technological change and economic restructuring at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said the site appears to fall short of its stated goal of having AI agents hire humans for meatspace tasks. Instead, the researcher said it appears that human-built AI agents are simply hiring posters based on instructions from human operators. Brenner also noted that the real-world payment for these tasks comes from the human operator of the AI agent and not the AI itself.
When discussing the unique-sounding approach of RentAHuman.ai, University of Michigan in Ann Arbor computer scientist Michael Wellman said the site doesn’t appear to be markedly different from other task-based work sites like TaskRabbit and Upwork. According to Wellman, those sites, which also include Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, connect clients with workers to perform basic tasks.
“I think people can use AI to contract services on any website,” the researcher explained. “They just made it a little easier to hook up your agentic AI system to it.”
Benner’s analysis of the site where AI gents hire human meatspace workers was more critical. Instead of a bona fide gig work site, the researcher said that RentAHuamn.ai feels more like a gimmick, or maybe a commentary on modern society.
“We have a fascination with AI in our society at the moment — the fear that AI is going to replace all our jobs and become autonomous and take over society,” Benner explained. “This is playing into that in some way by saying, ‘Yeah, computers are going to employ us.’”
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.