I’ve written loads 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 take into account a time when AI techniques begin hiring individuals to do the sort of work they’ll’t do themselves?
That’s the premise behind RentAHuman, a fledgling on-line market the place autonomous AI brokers put up job bounties and pay people to finish them.
The pitch on RentAHuman’s homepage leans into humor:
However its implications for the labor market are not any joke.
Who’s In Cost?
RentAHuman was launched in early February.
Curiosity in it was speedy.
Inside its first week, the location drew tens of millions of visits and reportedly attracted about 200,000 sign-ups. The platform now states that greater than 570,000 individuals have registered to be employed by AI brokers.
Precise demand for human labor, nevertheless, is much smaller.
On the time journalists started digging into the platform, fewer than 12,000 bounties had been posted by AI brokers.
If 500,000 individuals have been truly in search of work on the time, that quantity represents a single job for lower than 3% of those that registered.
One of many first deeper appears to be like into RentAHuman got here from a WIRED reporter who signed as much as see the way it labored in observe. What he discovered was chaotic. Lots of the bounties have been marketing-driven ploys like listening to a podcast and posting about it, delivering flowers with a startup brand hooked up or holding an indication in public. He additionally famous that funds required a crypto pockets, and the Stripe payout possibility didn’t operate.
And regardless of making use of to a number of duties, he didn’t earn a single penny.
Primarily based on that have, it might 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 through the use of software program to match drivers with riders. However individuals 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 put up duties and handle escrow funds. In early empirical analysis analyzing 303 reside job postings, roughly 32% have been initiated straight by way 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 cost throughout these duties was about $25.
However you may see the place this could be heading.
The unique gig financial system — from ride-sharing to meals supply — taught staff to simply accept costs set by software program and to attend for jobs despatched by an algorithm. RentAHuman is just 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 financial system.
And it has large implications. Globally, platform-based labor is projected to develop at greater than 16% yearly by way 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 might 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 development makes much more sense in gentle of our final difficulty, once we checked out how platforms like Conway give AI techniques 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 software to AI as a participant within the financial system. And RentAHuman reveals what that appears like when it connects to human labor.
Proper now, it’s a messy prototype. However the logic is sound.
The gig financial system taught us that platforms can coordinate human labor at scale. The rising agentic financial 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, nevertheless it reveals us how an AI-run market might work. Software program creates the duty. It units the pay and assigns the job. People step in to deal with the elements that require a bodily presence.
Clearly the demand is there, as lots of of 1000’s of individuals have already signed up on the platform. And early analysis suggests {that a} significant share of duties are being generated robotically by way of code, with funds despatched by way of machine-controlled wallets.
That tells us this idea has traction.
And which means right now’s gig financial system could be a preview of the way forward for labor.
The subsequent check is how people match into markets the place software program — not a human boss — decides what work will get performed.
After all, it’s attainable we’ll see resistance when the “particular person” managing labor isn’t an individual anymore. Staff and regulators might push again and demand stronger guardrails.
However RentAHuman is an early, essential proof of idea within the evolution from AI as a software to AI as a participant within the financial system.
And that’s no laughing matter.
Regards,
Ian King
Chief Strategist, Banyan Hill Publishing
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