AI gets applications to play boss

Early 2026, a website went live where AI systems can hire people for odd jobs. Within days, tens of thousands signed up. And me? I sat there with a beer watching it unfold. Because this has nothing to do with artificial intelligence, but everything to do with how many people have gotten used to the taste of dog food by now.

A journalist received ten identical messages from an AI agent about delivering flowers. Ten. Identical. This isn’t advanced technology, this is a bot stuck in a loop. A digital parrot repeating the same whistle. But over a hundred thousand people saw an algorithm as a potential boss and thought: great, finally someone who won’t make eye contact during the humiliation.

No job interviews where you have to lie about your biggest weakness. No team outings where Karen from HR forces you to dance. Just clear instructions from a calculator with delusions of grandeur. Direct payment, zero hassle. Sounds like a promotion compared to your current situation, right?

Legally, it’s a beautiful mess. Who’s liable when an AI tells you to climb a ladder onto a roof and you fall off? Labor law assumes your boss is human. Someone with intentions, responsibilities, a heartbeat. But an algorithm? It has about as much conscience as a blender.

Behind the tech packaging there’s just a crypto engineer who threw this together over a weekend. The very first task was doing marketing for his own employer. Only thirteen percent had even linked a payment account. This is viral marketing masquerading as revolution.

What’s disturbing isn’t what AI can do. It’s that tens of thousands signed up for a system with eighty clients. Eighty. They knew the chance of getting work was about as good as honesty in a CEO speech.