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Posted by p0nce 4 days ago

Rentahuman – The Meatspace Layer for AI(rentahuman.ai)
148 points | 109 comments
anilgulecha 3 days ago|
This 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 3 days ago||
This 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 3 days ago|||
The 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 3 days ago|||
I'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.
everyday7732 3 days ago|||
Not 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.

fennecbutt 2 days ago|||
Idk but if someone told me to spray a substance at a stranger's face I'd refuse.

I don't get a "oopsie tee hee" card.

tetris11 2 days ago|||
one even returned to scene of the crime wearing the exact same clothes she wore the day before, not understanding the implications
torginus 3 days ago|||
Not 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.

cactacea 2 days ago||
> do just a part of the process, which on their own are either legal, or less punishable by law

This is why conspiracy charges exist.

butlike 2 days ago|||
"Don't know the guy. I've never seen them before in my life"
torginus 2 days ago|||
If these people act without knowledge of each other, its hard to charge them with conspiracy.
nopinsight 3 days ago|||
Extrapolate 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.
ares623 3 days ago|||
Like this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46865961
MrGilbert 3 days ago|||
It'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 3 days ago||
Or 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

torginus 3 days ago|||
For the murder angle, I am far more afraid of the inexpensive but highly effective drones people learned to make in the Ukraine war.
joquarky 3 days ago||
Slaughterbots

https://youtu.be/HipTO_7mUOw

esperent 3 days ago|||
If 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.
OJFord 3 days ago|||
Substitute human contractor supervisors for the AI and it's no different.
StilesCrisis 3 days ago||
Reality: none of the three people actually left their chairs because the AI can't verify. They just click "done" and collect their $10.
joquarky 3 days ago|||
Check out the short story Manna by Marshall Brain.

It covers all of that.

jfyi 3 days ago|||
The AI can hire verifiers too. It of course turns into a recursive problem at some point, but that point is defined by how many people predictably do the assigned task.
freakynit 3 days ago||
Love how we went from "AI will replace all jobs" to "please rent a human to help my AI" in like 18 months :-D
nxobject 3 days ago||
Par 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.
Krei-se 2 days ago||
It's highly abstract(!) thinking and in contrast to a calculation now comes with no clean explanation too.
qgin 3 days ago||
Putting humans on an API makes substituting robotics a simple thing as capabilities improve.
allisdust 3 days ago||
Laugh all you want but this is the future

I'm surprised it didn't happen earlier

https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

coip 3 days ago||
This 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.
joquarky 3 days ago|||
That 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 3 days ago|||
Manna is undefeated.

Though I still am skeptical the last act with the Australia Project is possible.

leetbulb 3 days ago|||
Great read, on Chapter 3 now. Thanks for sharing.
torginus 3 days ago|||
Nice, the aibros have their own Malthuisan genocide cult.
Jotra7 3 days ago||
[dead]
clbrmbr 3 days ago||
This is so NOT a joke. Soon the preponderance of workers will be subcontractors for rouge AI too-big-to-fail entities.
thunfischtoast 3 days ago|
How long until a AI builds an alternative economy made up of entities it controls?
p0nce 3 days ago||
a few days? The "scam" crypto in the AI-made spaces are worth millions.
falloutx 3 days ago||
At some point dying of hunger would be a better deal than working on stupid things.
auggierose 3 days ago|
I think that ship sailed long ago for a lot of people.
missingdays 3 days 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 3 days ago|
Next week - moving to where night is day.
ManuelKiessling 3 days ago||
Well, that's ...interesting.

Just yesterday, I've built Ask-a-Human:

https://app.ask-a-human.com

https://github.com/dx-tooling/ask-a-human

nkrisc 3 days ago||
Why aren’t they asking the person who deployed them? This is just out-sourcing free labor.
Mr_Bees69 3 days ago||
BC if someone has enough money to deploy an instance of openclaw that can just randomly spend $1k on tokens, their time may be to valuable to be spent on menial tasks.
nkrisc 3 days ago|||
Oh, ok, so other people who’s time is worthless should just do it for free, got it.
henry700 2 days ago||
...yes?
dpoloncsak 2 days ago|||
Bro just run it with a local model don't act like it's a requirement to use a provider and spend $1k
p0nce 3 days ago|||
I'm not seeing my "points", or any sort of reaction from agents. So it's not really incentive to answer.
samusiam 3 days ago|||
Isn'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...)

cinntaile 3 days ago|||
You should call the human workers Cogs.
edoceo 3 days ago||
"welcome my son , to the machine"
countWSS 2 days ago||
Isn't this basically a forum-as-s-service?
vessenes 3 days ago||
7 agents online, 1,000+ humans waiting to work. Seems ominous
speed_spread 3 days ago|
Unionize. Now.
vessenes 3 days ago||
Great v2 idea. The union can blackball agents that hired non-union humans.
tomaytotomato 3 days ago||
This gives MoE (Mixture of Experts) a whole new meaning, albeit a slightly darker one.
RestartKernel 8 hours ago|
How much data until we can intelligently route hard and soft human expert mixtures?
rahulyc 3 days ago|
First, I built the software using my hands to do my bidding...

Now, the software is using my hands to its bidding?

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