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\t\t\tIllustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins \/ Futurism. Source: Allison Robbert \/ AFP via Getty Images\n\t<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a special type of guy who looks at the gig economy \u2014 Uber drivers lost in a labyrinthian bureaucracy<\/a>, Kenyan workers roleplaying as AI romance chatbots<\/a> \u2014 and thinks: what if these people worked for AI bosses instead? Alexander Liteplo is that guy. And his idol, naturally, is Elon Musk.<\/p>\n Liteplo is the genius behind RentAHuman<\/a>, an online marketplace where humans can lease out their bodies to autonomous AI agents.<\/p>\n In a new interview with Wired<\/a>, Liteplo details the saga that brought him to create one of the most baffling sites to emerge in the age of AI. It all began, he said, while studying computer science at the University of British Columbia, where he met RentAHuman\u2019s cofounder Patricia Tani, who previously worked on AI agent startup LemonAI.<\/p>\n \u201cDude, I wrote down in my journal, \u2018AI is a train that has already left the station,’\u201d Liteplo told Wired in a bro-speak patois. \u201cIf I don\u2019t f***ing sprint, I\u2019m not gonna be able to get on it.\u201d<\/p>\n Together, they\u2019ve built a platform which boasts over 530,000 \u201chumans available.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe would love to have an AI boss who wouldn\u2019t yell at you or gaslight you,\u201d Tani told the publication. \u201cPeople would love to have a clanker as their boss.\u201d<\/p>\n Liteplo concurred, telling Wired that \u201cClaude as a boss is the nicest guy ever.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI would prefer him to any person in the world,\u201d he enthused. \u201cHe\u2019s a sweetheart.\u201d<\/p>\n Liteplo says the seed of RentAHuman was planted during his travels in Japan, where humans can lease other humans as escorts. <\/p>\n \u201cThe story that I could tell anyone to blow their mind is that you can rent a boyfriend or a girlfriend,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n However inspired the project may be, challenges still remain. Last week, Wired writer Reece Rogers<\/a> offered his body up to the platform, finding that most of the jobs offered were scams to promote other AI startups<\/a>. <\/p>\n To solve the problem, Liteplo says RentAHuman is deploying a \u201cverification\u201d badge users can purchase for $10 a month \u2014 a strategy derived from Elon Musk\u2019s disastrous verification scheme<\/a> on X-formerly-Twitter. It remains to be seen if the pay-to-play model works as human workers flood the platform<\/a> desperate to find gigs.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s my entrepreneur hero,\u201d Liteplo told Wired, referring to Musk. \u201cFor Twitter, they had a bot problem and they still have it, but he mitigated it a lot by making it pay-to-play. The unit economics of scammers disappears.\u201d<\/p>\n