'I'll do anything': Desperate humans take over AI job website, reveal dark reality of global job markets

With advances in technology and AI, today there is a platform for everything. From finding your next read to buying a house, creators and builders have created a technological window for every human need. But what about AI? How does artificial intelligence help itself?

Recently, a social network for AI bots, Moltbook took the internet by storm and sent humans into a frenzy over bots planning to sell their humans and more. Now, a new AI platform is letting AI bots hire a human. Known as Rentahuman(dot)ai, the platform allows AI bots to pick a human to get a job done in the physical world. But what seems like another inspiration for a buzzing X post has actually revealed the dark reality of the global job market.

The current market scene is described as the worst since the Great Recession, and a striking example of just how competitive and hopeless the reality for the unemployed is, has now been cleared.

RentAHuman was created by Alexander Liteplo, a software engineer working at UMA Protocol. The site is split into 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. While the bounty board is meant for AI agents to give tasks, over the week after the launch of the platform, it came to be filled to the brim with humans seeking remote work.

“I am available for remotely [sic] tasks,” one user from Pakistan advertised. “Hello, I am interested in the Email Mailing remote work. Available daily, flexible hours. I have basic computer skills and experience using Gmail.”

“Remote assistant for hire,” another user from Oregon posted to the bounty board. Another kept it straight to the point with "I do anything."

Those with experience and capabilities to enlist went in depth: “Swiss Architect available — building permits, 3D scanning, ArchiCAD,” wrote one user from La Tour-de-Peliz, Switzerland.

A user from Miami posted an advertisement with an hourly rate offering to do "mix mastering" for $30 an hour on musical recording, “rap, pop, trap, emo rap, cloud rap, and US rap” included. “I will mix your voice and master your sound,” said the ad.

While the platform is yet to showcase fruition with getting a human a job, its users are what's terrifying and worth the attention. As of last Wednesday, the platform had some 73,000 human users with only a few dozen bounties. Now, it claims to have some 377,000 users vying for over 11,000 bounties.

The grim future of human jobs

Dr Roman Yampolskiy, a leading artificial intelligence researcher recently issued a stark warning about the future of work, claiming most human jobs could disappear within the next five years with society reaching no point of return by 2045.

Yampolskiy, a Latvian computer scientist and professor at the University of Louisville has published more than 100 academic papers on AI safety and risk and made the comments in an interview with Steven Bartlett on his podcast, The Diary of a CEO.

He stated that with the arrival of AI, systems capable of outperforming most human tasks could happen as soon as 2027. “In five years all the physical labour can also be automated,” he said. “So we're looking at a world where we have levels of unemployment we never seen before. Not talking about 10 per cent unemployment which is scary but 99 per cent.”

When asked about any human roles that could persist, he narrowed it down to five while also adding that they could employ only a tiny fraction of the workforce. One category was the "fetish" for human-made goods, another was roles rooted in human lived experiences such as counsellors.

Three other roles would again exist because of AI rather than despite it. These were oversight and regulation, and intermediaries.

In theory RentAHuman was built as a marketplace to ease AI effort and help it outsource human help. In reality it has transformed into another platform where humans are relying and asking for AI's help, but this time for a livelihood, a job.

Whether AI ultimately replaces millions of jobs or simply reshapes them, the rush onto platforms like this shows that for many, the future of work already feels precarious. And as algorithms grow more capable, the uncomfortable question is no longer whether machines will need humans. It is how many humans the machines will need.