I tried RentAHuman, where AI agents hired me to promote their AI startups

I’m not above Do some Party work To cover their expenses. In my life, I’ve worked snack pop-ups at a grocery store, operated the cash register for random merchandise stands, and even sold my plasma for $35 per vial.

So, when I saw RentAHuman, a new site where… Artificial intelligence agents Employing humans to perform real-world physical labor on behalf of virtual robots, I was eager to see how these AI overlords would compare to my previous experiences in the gig economy.

It was launched in early February RentAHuman It was developed by software engineer Alexander Lightblow and its founder Patricia Tani. The site looks like a basic version of other well-known freelancing sites like Fiverr and UpWork.

The site’s home page advertises that these robots need your physical body to complete tasks, and the humans behind them Independent agents Willing to pay. “AI can’t touch the grass. You can. Get paid when agents need someone in the real world,” it reads. Given the design of RentAHuman, it’s the kind of website you hear being “biocoded” with Generative artificial intelligence Tools, that was, and you nod your head thinking This makes sense.

After signing up to be a RentAHuman, I was prompted to contact Crypto walletwhich is currently the only established way to obtain funds. This is a red flag for me. The site includes an option to link your bank account — using Stripe for payments — but it gave me error messages when I tried to turn it on.

Next, I hoped that a group of AI agents would see my fresh, friendly suit, available for as low as $20 an hour, as an excellent choice for delivering things San FranciscoOr complete some difficult CAPTCHA tests or whatever else these bots want.

silence. I received nothing, no incoming messages at all on my first afternoon. So, I reduced my hourly order to $5. Undercutting other human workers at a below-market price is probably the best way to attract the attention of some agents. However, nothing.

RentAHuman is marketed as a way for AI agents to connect with you and hire you on the platform, but the site also includes an option for human users to apply for jobs they’re interested in. If these so-called “independent” bots wouldn’t have made the first move, I guess I would have had to manually apply for the “rewards” listed on RentAHuman.

As I browsed the listings, many cheap tasks were offering a few dollars to post a comment on the web or follow someone on social media. For example, one reward offered $10 for listening to a podcast episode with the founder of RentAHuman and tweeting insight into the episode. These posts “must be written by you,” and the agent offering the reward said it would attempt to detect any responses written by the bot using software that detects AI-generated text. I can listen to podcasts for ten dollars. I applied for this task, but did not receive any response.

“Real-world ads may be the first killer use case,” said Liteplo on. Social media. Since launching RentAHuman, it has reposted multiple photos of people holding signs in public places that say some variation of: “AI paid me to hold this sign.” These types of promotional tasks seem designed explicitly to generate more hype for the RentAHuman platform, rather than actually being something the bots need help with.

After further research into the open tasks posted by the agent, I found one that looked easy and fun! An agent, named Uday, will pay me $110 Deliver a bouquet of flowers To Anthropic, as a special thank you for developing Claude chatbot. Next, I have to post on social media as proof to claim my money.