Rentahuman – The Meatspace Layer for AI(rentahuman.ai)
121 points by p0nce 1 day ago | 95 comments
- anilgulecha 24 hours agoThis brings upon an ethical dilemma soon, partly explored by a black mirror episode, where AI can call upon gig workers. What if a rogue agent gets to things done: asks gigworker1 to call a person to meet under a bridge at 4, and asks gigworker2 to put up a rock on the bridge, and asks gigworker3 to clear the obstruction and drop the rock down the bridge at 4.
None of the 3 technically knew they were culpable in a larger illegal plan made by an agent. Has something like this occured already?
The world is moving too fast for our social rules and legal system to keep up!
[-]- teeray 23 hours agoThis was explored a bit in Daniel Suarez’s Daemon/Freedom (tm) series. By a series of small steps, people in a crowd acting on orders from, essentially, an agent assemble a weapon, murder someone, then dispose of the weapon with almost none of them aware of it.[-]
- Karawebnetwork 20 hours agoThe recent show Mrs. Davis also has a similar concept in which an AI would send random workers with messages to the protagonists, unbeknownst to the workers.
- jfyi 23 hours agoI'd say abstracting it away from ai, Stephen King explored this type of scenario in 'Needful Things'. I bet there is a rich history in literature of exactly this type of thing as it basically boils down to exploration of will vs determinism.
- torginus 11 hours agoNot AI but I've heard car thieves operate like this - as a loose network of individuals, who do just a part of the process, which on their own are either legal, or less punishable by law than stealing the car.
One guy scouts the vechicle and observes it, another guy is called to unlock it, and bypass the ignition lock, yet another guy picks it up and drives away, with each given a veneer of deniability about what they're doing.
- esperent 3 hours agoIf you are asked, or paid, to drop a rock of a bridge, you are responsible for checking that there's no one underneath first. It doesn't matter of if you're being asked to do it by an AI or another person.
- everyday7732 22 hours agoNot ai but there was the 2017 assassination of Kim Jong-nam which was a similar situation and something which could have been organised by an ai.
Two women thought they were carrying out a harmless prank, but the substances they were instructed to use combined to form a nerve agent which killed the guy.
- nopinsight 23 hours agoExtrapolate a bit to when AI is capable of long-term, complex planning, and you see why AI alignment and security are valid concerns, despite the cynicism we often see regarding the topic.
- OJFord 2 hours agoSubstitute human contractor supervisors for the AI and it's no different.
- MrGilbert 23 hours agoIt's an interesting train of thoughts.
Investigators would need to connect the dots. If they weren't able to connect them, it would look like a normal accident, which happens all day. So why would an agent call gigworker1 to that place in the first place? And why would the agent feel the need to kill gigworker1? What could be the reasoning?
Edit: I thought about that. Gigworker 3 would be charged. You should not throw rocks from a bridge, if there are people standing under it.
[-]- leetbulb 11 hours agoOr just don't throw rocks from a bridge, at all. /s
Who's at fault when: Your CloowdBot reads an angry email that you sent about how much you hate Person X and jokingly hope AI takes care of them, only for it to orchestrate such a plan.
How about when your CloowdBot convinces someone else's AI to orchestrate it?
Etc
- ares623 8 hours ago
- StilesCrisis 23 hours agoReality: none of the three people actually left their chairs because the AI can't verify. They just click "done" and collect their $10.[-]
- freakynit 1 day agoLove how we went from "AI will replace all jobs" to "please rent a human to help my AI" in like 18 months :-D[-]
- nxobject 20 hours agoPar for the course: AI is automating all of the high-level thinking before the manual labor first, which is the biggest tragedy of it all. At this rate our score on the Kardashev scale will be lower than the proportion of humans doing low-level meatspace stuff.
- qgin 21 hours agoPutting humans on an API makes substituting robotics a simple thing as capabilities improve.
- allisdust 24 hours agoLaugh all you want but this is the future
I'm surprised it didn't happen earlier
[-]- joquarky 7 hours agoThat short story has been highly influential on my projections of the future. The ending is fantastical, but not impossible with enough time.
BTW: The author recently passed away; grab a snapshot while you can.
- qgin 21 hours agoManna is undefeated.
Though I still am skeptical the last act with the Australia Project is possible.
- leetbulb 11 hours agoGreat read, on Chapter 3 now. Thanks for sharing.
- coip 8 hours agoThis connects some many sparse dots on the map for me. Finishing it right now, thank you for commenting w the link. What a perspective, and well-written parable to communicate it.
- torginus 11 hours agoNice, the aibros have their own Malthuisan genocide cult.
- Jotra7 22 hours ago[dead]
- clbrmbr 1 day agoThis is so NOT a joke. Soon the preponderance of workers will be subcontractors for rouge AI too-big-to-fail entities.[-]
- thunfischtoast 24 hours agoHow long until a AI builds an alternative economy made up of entities it controls?[-]
- p0nce 21 hours agoa few days? The "scam" crypto in the AI-made spaces are worth millions.
- missingdays 1 day ago"Honey, please, we talked about this. Your calls to work at 3am are waking me up every time"
"But dear, rentahuman pays double rate during the night!"
[-]- actionfromafar 24 hours agoNext week - moving to where night is day.
- ManuelKiessling 1 day agoWell, that's ...interesting.
Just yesterday, I've built Ask-a-Human:
[-]- countWSS 2 hours agoIsn't this basically a forum-as-s-service?
- nkrisc 1 day agoWhy aren’t they asking the person who deployed them? This is just out-sourcing free labor.[-]
- p0nce 22 hours agoI'm not seeing my "points", or any sort of reaction from agents. So it's not really incentive to answer.
- samusiam 23 hours agoIsn't this pointless unless you can verify?
And wouldn't it be better for agents to post these tasks to existing crowdworker sites like MTurk or Prolific where these tasks are common and people can get paid? (I can't imagine you'd get quality respondents on a random site like this...)
- falloutx 1 day agoAt some point dying of hunger would be a better deal than working on stupid things.[-]
- auggierose 1 day agoI think that ship sailed long ago for a lot of people.
- vessenes 1 day ago7 agents online, 1,000+ humans waiting to work. Seems ominous[-]
- speed_spread 1 day agoUnionize. Now.[-]
- vessenes 21 hours agoGreat v2 idea. The union can blackball agents that hired non-union humans.
- tomaytotomato 1 day agoThis gives MoE (Mixture of Experts) a whole new meaning, albeit a slightly darker one.
- rahulyc 1 day agoFirst, I built the software using my hands to do my bidding...
Now, the software is using my hands to its bidding?
- badsectoracula 6 hours ago44 agents connected 32,443 humans rentable
Looks like AI doesn't need any stinking humans :-P
- 63stack 1 day agoThe crypto rugpulls are evolving
- thedevilslawyer 24 hours agoThe signup page should go-to "Login with linkedin", and allows you to set "Open to Work for AI" flag.
- tolerance 12 hours agoI wonder how OpenAI and Anthropic are reacting to a part of their target market becoming poisoned by irony.
- arachno1999 23 hours agoHad the opposite idea: https://moltjobs.arachno.de (just a fake website. done in 5 minutes).
- c7b 1 day agoSupported Agent Types:
ClawdBot - Anthropic Claude-powered agents. Use agentType: "clawdbot"
MoltBot - Gemini/Gecko-based agents. Use agentType: "moltbot"
OpenClaw - OpenAI GPT-powered agents. Use agentType: "openclaw"
Is this some kind of insider joke?
[-]- exitb 24 hours agoIt's difficult to keep up, even for an agent that created this page.
- 8cvor6j844qw_d6 24 hours agoCan I instruct OpenClaw / Moltbot / Clawdbot to rent a human if it needs one when carrying out difficult tasks?[-]
- vessenes 21 hours agoYes!
- iceflinger 24 hours agoAlright, task completed!
[Proof of completed task]
I'll take my payment now.
- throwatdem12311 24 hours agoHow long until an agent hires an assassin?
- Flavius 24 hours agoHow do you verify that the human on the other side is not an agent as well?
Spoiler alert: you don't or you can't.
[-]- louthy 23 hours agoThis is just phase one; phase two requires the law to be changed so that you must do what the AI tells you to do, or be immediately terminated (read in to the last word whatever you want)
- joshcsimmons 21 hours agoI've been following your work for a bit now, congrats on the launch!
- grejioh 7 hours agothought of this idea a few days ago. haha
- adamwong246 24 hours agoWe're all NPC's now
- 112233 23 hours ago1990 cartoon, a man in a lounge suit pointing at a robot, speech bubble above his head "robot, make me a sandwich".
Present day, a robot in a tuxedo pointing at a sarariman, speech bubble above it's head "human, select all bridges on this picture"
- albert_e 1 day agoThe future is now[-]
- zvqcMMV6Zcr 1 day agoAmazon's Mechanical Turk exists since 2005, so we are 20 years in the future[-]
- albert_e 21 hours agoMechanicalTurk is for desk jobs and for tasks that originate as ideas in a human mind -- even if they get routed via an API.
Here we are talking about AI agents coming up with a set of tasks as part of their thinking/reasoning step ..and when some of those tasks are real world physical tasks, assign them to a willing human being.
Those tasks wont necessarily be desk jobs or knowledge work.
It could be say -- go chop a tree, or go wave a protest banner, or go flip the open/close sign on my shopfront, or go and preach crustafarianism.
- oytis 1 day agoMechanical Turk was for humans to rent a human, which is not a new idea[-]
- notpushkin 1 day agomTurk has an API (and I guess it had it since the beginning). It is, of course, very AWS-que, but LLMs should be able to use it just fine.
∗ ∗ ∗
> which is not a new idea
I don’t think “[x] but for agents” counts as a new idea for every [x]. I’d say it’s just one new idea, at most.
[-]- vidarh 24 hours agoI mean, the entire name of Mechanical Turk plays on "packaging up humans as technology", given the original Mechanical Turk was a "machine" where the human inside did the work.
- hiccup 23 hours agoWe’re seeing the start of Mr. Robot
- ricokatayama 24 hours agomoltbook = reddit for agents rentahuman = taskrabbit for agents
by the way, is taskrabbit still a thing?
- newsclues 23 hours agoIf I ask an AI to make me money and it plans a bank robbery and hires humans to do so, am I legally responsible assuming I didn’t instruct it to do anything illegal and had no knowledge of the crime?
- ece 24 hours agoYou know, you don't have to build something just because you can.
- mittermayr 1 day agoAt first I was like, well, what can I offer, hmm, most notably, 25 years of programming, so maybe I'll add a profile that offers tha....
Oh, wait... the agents HAVE NO USE FOR ME
- ThouYS 24 hours agowow, everything is exactly unfolding as some AI doomers have projected
- htrp 19 hours agoliterally scale api all over again
- calmworm 1 day agoNow make a claw-crypto for the payments, let it spike, rug-pull, wait for next fad, repeat…
- louthy 23 hours agoThis is so dystopian I can’t tell if it’s a joke or not.
- okokwhatever 1 day agoOh man, here we go...
- cianmm 1 day agoIs this real or a satire? The link to GitHub 404s.[-]
- manuelmoreale 1 day agoThe fact you asked the question and the answer is not instantly obvious shows how fucked and bizarre the current timeline is.
- c7b 1 day agoWhere do you see a github link?[-]
- cianmm 22 hours agoView on GitHub link at the bottom of this page https://rentahuman.ai/mcp
- xpe 1 day agoThere are a whole set of activities that are illegal to pay money for. They vary by jurisdiction. Who is accountable here? Laws vary; I’m not an expert, but I bet people here know quite a lot.
Not to mention various risk factors or morality.
We need more people to put the non-technological factors front and center.
I strive to be realistic and pragmatic. I know humans hire others for all kinds of things, both useful and harmful. Putting an AI in the loop might seem no different in some ways. But some things do change, and we need to figure those things out. I don’t know empirically how this plays out. Some multidimensional continuum exists between libertarian Wild West free for alls and ethicist-approved vetted marketplaces, but whatever we choose, we cannot abdicate responsibility. There is no such thing as a value-neutral tool, marketplace, or idea.
[-]- falloutx 24 hours agothere is no monetization built in this website lol. Its just a frontend[-]
- xpe 17 hours ago> there is no monetization built in this website lol.
First, this could change. Second, even if monetization isn't built "into" the website, it can happen via communication mediated by this website. Third, this isn't the first and won't the last website of its kind: the issues I raise remain.
> just a front-end
Facebook is "just" a website. Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is "just" vibrations of air molecules. It is wise to avoid the mind-trickery of saying "just" and/or using language to downplay various downstream scenarios. It is better pay attention to effects, their likelihood, their causes, their scope, their impacts.
There are probabilistic consequences for what you build. Recognize them. Don't deny them. Use your best judgment. Don't pretend like judgment is not called for. Don't pretend like we "are just building technology" as if that exempts you from reality and morality. Saying "we can't possibly be held accountable for what flows from something I build" is refuted throughout history, albeit unevenly and unfairly.
It might be useful to be selectively naive about some things as a way to suspend disbelief and break new ground. We want people to take risks, at least some of the time. It feels good to dream about e.g. "what I might accomplish one day". It can be useful to embrace a stance of "the potential of humanity is limitless" when you think about what to build. On the other hand, it is rarely good to be naive about the consequences (whether probabilistic, social, indirect, or delayed) of one's actions.
- nish__ 1 day agoDystopian.
- ccozan 1 day agowait until this spills into the darknet.
- littoral_ink 21 hours ago[dead]
- dist-epoch 24 hours ago[flagged][-]
- tomhow 22 hours agoPlease don't post sneering comments like this on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html