Who’s the Boss? 🚛👩🏽‍⚕️

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the rise of RentAHuman, the hiring platform that gives human workers gigs on behalf of AI agent ‘bosses’. A glimpse of a dystopian future? Or is it simply a natural evolution of the gig economy in the age of AI? We also have news on how Clawdbot had a Meta researcher in a tizzy, it’s all change at the top of Xbox, and Meta is releasing a new smartwatch. We will also bring you up to speed with the latest from 3Advance.

🎬 Our Top Take

📱📵 AI – RentAHuman Puts New Spin on AI Taking Our Jobs

It is often the riposte to the doomer assertion that AI will take our jobs that AI will inevitably create new types of jobs, but what about working directly ‘for’ AI? That’s somewhere near the premise of RentAHuman, a hiring platform that advertises for humans to act on behalf of AI agents. As you might expect, the roles are those that AI can’t perform (yet) – like delivering a package or signing a document. The platform has seen rapid success – over 500,000 humans are now offering their services – and caused almost philosophical debates over what it means for the future and our relationships with AI agents. Of course, while the media spin on this is that these gig workers have AI as their boss, we know that the AI agents are deployed on behalf of human-owned companies, so the machines are in a kind of middle-management role. So not quite Skynet yet, but perhaps a taste of the new gig economy that leans more heavily on AI. #HumansForRent Read more here.

📲 App of the Week: Particle

There’s no end to AI tools that will summarize information for you, but Particle AI has carved out a strong niche for itself in the personalized news aggregation space. As that suggests, Particle, which was launched in 2024 by ex-Twitter staff, can create a curated personal news feed of your interests from a variety of sources across the web. But it has drawn our eye due to a new feature, Podcast Clips, which, as the name suggests, can search your favorite podcasts to create mini-clips of stuff that you might be interested in listening to. You can find Particle for iPhone here and Android here. It’s free, but in-app purchases are pushed for premium features.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 80%

📈📉 AI – Major Study of Productivity Gains Disappoints (For Now)

You gotta break eggs to make an omelet, right? That’s more or less the conclusion of a massive study conducted with 6,000 executives to get a handle on AI tools and their impact on enterprise productivity. The upshot? Four in five business leaders claimed the introduction of AI tools led to zero productivity gains. That said, the survey also highlighted that many of those executives believed the gains would come. #ProductivityPain Read more here.

🗞️ Other Stories

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

We technically missed National Love Your Pet Day (Feb 20)… but, truly, every day qualifies around here. Our Slack threads love a dog photo, and Zoom calls sometimes include surprise cameos. Which makes it especially fun that we’ve had the chance to build something like LifePlus Pets. If you’ve ever wanted to get healthier with your pet, it’s a really special one. The app blends fitness, dog training, and stress relief into one seamless experience – so you can track your walks, strengthen your bond with guided training exercises, and hit your wellness goals together. Download it now for iOS or Android and see how small steps with your pup can lead to big health wins! 🐕‍🦺