Every now and then, a Silicon Valley startup launches with such an \u201cabsurdly\u201d described mission that it\u2019s difficult to discern if the startup is for real or just satire.<\/p>\n
Such is the case with Mechanize<\/a>, a startup whose founder \u2013 and the non-profit AI research organization he founded called Epoch \u2013 is being skewered on X after he announced it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Complaints encompass both the startup\u2019s mission, and the implication that it sullies the reputation of his well-respected research institute. (A director at the research institute even posted<\/a> on X, \u201cYay just what I wanted for my bday: a comms crisis.\u201d)<\/p>\n Mechanize was launched on Thursday via a post on X<\/a> by its founder, famed AI researcher Tamay Besiroglu. The startup\u2019s goal, Besiroglu wrote, is \u201cthe full automation of all work\u201d and \u201cthe full automation of the economy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Does that mean Mechanize is working to replace every human worker with an AI agent bot? Essentially, yes. The startup wants to provide the data, evaluations, and digital environments to make worker automation of any job possible.<\/p>\n Besiroglu even calculated Mechanize\u2019s total addressable market by aggregating all the wages humans are currently paid. \u201cThe market potential here is absurdly large: workers in the US are paid around $18 trillion per year in aggregate. For the entire world, the number is over three times greater, around $60 trillion per year,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n Besiroglu did, however, clarify to TechCrunch that \u201cour immediate focus is indeed on white-collar work\u201d rather than manual labor jobs that would require robotics.\u00a0<\/p>\n The response to the startup was often brutal. As X user Anthony Aguirre<\/a> replied, \u201cHuge respect for the founders\u2019 work at Epoch, but sad to see this. The automation of most human labor is indeed a giant prize for companies, which is why many of the biggest companies on Earth are already pursuing it. I think it will be a huge loss for most humans.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n But the controversial part isn\u2019t just this startup\u2019s mission. Besiroglu\u2019s AI research institute, Epoch, analyzes the economic impact of AI and produces benchmarks for AI performance. It was believed to be an impartial way to check performance claims of the SATA frontier model makers and others.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t the first time Epoch has waded into controversy<\/a>. In December, Epoch revealed that OpenAI supported the creation of one of its AI benchmarks, which the ChatGPT-maker then used to unveil its new o3 model. Social media users felt Epoch should have been more up-front about the relationship.<\/p>\n When Besiroglu announced Mechanize, X user Oliver Habryka replied<\/a>, \u201cAlas, this seems like approximate confirmation that Epoch research was directly feeding into frontier capability work, though I had hope that it wouldn\u2019t literally come from you.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Besiroglu says Mechanize is backed by a who\u2019s who: Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, Patrick Collison, Dwarkesh Patel, Jeff Dean, Sholto Douglas, and Marcus Abramovitch. Friedman, Gross, and Dean did not return TechCrunch\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n Marcus Abramovitch confirmed that he invested. Abramovitch is a managing Partner at crypto hedge fund AltX, and self-described<\/a> \u201ceffective altruist.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He told TechCrunch he invested because, \u201cThe team is exceptional across many dimensions and have thought deeper on AI than anyone I know.\u201d<\/p>\n Good for humans, too?<\/p>\n Still, Besiroglu argues to the naysayers that having agents do all the work will actually enrich humans, not impoverish them, through \u201cexplosive economic growth.\u201d He points to a paper he published <\/a>on the topic.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCompletely automating labor could generate vast abundance, much higher standards of living, and new goods and services that we can\u2019t even imagine today,\u201d he told TechCrunch.<\/p>\n This might be true for whoever owns the agents. That is, if employers pay for them instead of developing them in-house (presumably, by other agents?).<\/p>\n On the other hand, this optimistic outlook overlooks a basic fact: if humans don\u2019t have jobs, they won\u2019t have the income to purchase all the things the AI agents are producing.<\/p>\n Still, Besiroglu says that human wages in such an AI-automated world should actually increase because such workers are \u201cmore valuable in complementary roles that AI cannot perform.\u201d<\/p>\n But remember, the goal is for the agents to do all the work. When asked about that, he explained, \u201cEven in scenarios where wages might decrease, economic well-being isn\u2019t solely determined by wages. People typically receive income from other sources\u2014such as rents, dividends, and government welfare.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n So perhaps we all make our living from stocks or real estate. Failing that, there\u2019s always welfare \u2013 if the AI agents are paying taxes.<\/p>\n Even though Besiroglu vision and mission are clearly extreme, the technical issue he\u2019s looking to solve is legit. If each human worker has a personal crew of agents which helps them produce more work, economic abundance could follow.\u00a0And Besiroglu is unquestionably right on at least one thing: a year into the age of AI agents, they don\u2019t work very well.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n He notes that they are unreliable, don\u2019t retain information, struggle to independently complete tasks as asked, \u201cand can\u2019t execute long-term plans without going off the rails.\u201d<\/p>\n However, he\u2019s hardly alone in working on fixes. Giant companies like Salesforce and Microsoft<\/a> are building agentic platforms. OpenAI is, too<\/a>. And agent startups abound: from tasks specialists (outbound sales, financial analysis); to those working on training data. Others are working on agent pricing economics<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the meantime, Besiroglu wants you to know: Mechanize is hiring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every now and then, a Silicon Valley startup launches with such an \u201cabsurdly\u201d described mission that it\u2019s difficult…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35189,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,4809,1942,20373,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-35188","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-ai-agents","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-epoch-ai","12":"tag-technology","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114369472951266692","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}