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wongarsu 7 hours ago

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

mycall 7 hours ago | parent [-]

It's in chicken-egg mode, where could be useful if more people and bots used it, but not there yet.

add-sub-mul-div 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

mycall 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I agree. Unless they fix things, this will crash and burn, but the idea still has a future.

co_king_3 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> [it] could be useful if more people and bots used it

That's a very optimistic way of looking at things!

tinfoilhatter 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Cannot fathom how being slaves for AI agents translates to usefulness.

a4isms 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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...

bell-cot 4 hours ago | parent [-]

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?

mrguyorama an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Poverty

mycall 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Sucker?

bell-cot 4 hours ago | parent [-]

You don't remember this classic?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30878489

sheikhnbake 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We're acclimating ourselves to the inevitable service to our future AI overlords

co_king_3 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I agree that the deal the site proposes is essentially being a slave to an AI agent.

ungreased0675 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Other than the getting paid part. Let’s not trivialize slavery by making it equivalent to gig work.

owebmaster 4 hours ago | parent [-]

That's definitely not trivializing. Algorithmic slavery should be a thing and discussed, it's real slavery.