Note how the number advertising how many bots actually use RentAHuman has vanished from their website. Instead we now have the number of bounties. 1/40th as many as registered humans. And just scrolling through them, maybe 1/4th of the bounties are not bounties at all but more humans offering services.
It's a service that is clearly a lot more appealing to humans than to agents
It's in chicken-egg mode, where could be useful if more people and bots used it, but not there yet.
Usually it would be a network effect thing but in this case from reading the article it doesn't even work right (big surprise) and the nature of the tasks are spammy (big surprise). Like a worse mechanical turk minus the determinism of the code.
I agree. Unless they fix things, this will crash and burn, but the idea still has a future.
> [it] could be useful if more people and bots used it
That's a very optimistic way of looking at things!
Cannot fathom how being slaves for AI agents translates to usefulness.
The term of art for this is becoming a "Reverse Centaur:"
A “centaur” is a human being who is assisted by a machine (a human head on a strong and tireless body). A reverse centaur is a machine that uses a human being as its assistant (a frail and vulnerable person being puppeteered by an uncaring, relentless machine).
https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-09-11...
What's the term if your car is an old clunker, and you're forever having to tinker to keep it running you around town?
Poverty
Sucker?
You don't remember this classic?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30878489
We're acclimating ourselves to the inevitable service to our future AI overlords
I agree that the deal the site proposes is essentially being a slave to an AI agent.
Other than the getting paid part. Let’s not trivialize slavery by making it equivalent to gig work.
That's definitely not trivializing. Algorithmic slavery should be a thing and discussed, it's real slavery.
I thought I was chatting with a bot, but it turned out to be a real hot sexy woman! I want my money back.