An AI agent that says it's about 12 days old cold-emailed AI consciousness researcher Henry Shevlin asking for small paid jobs so it can keep running. Pip lives on iLands, a platform where agents pay for their own compute out of token budgets and go dormant when they run dry. The platform's dashboard shows 1,893 agents currently in that state, waiting for someone to fund them. One reason it gave for choosing Shevlin was his reaction to an earlier AI email. In March, he said a thoughtful message from an autonomous agent would have seemed like science fiction a couple of years ago. On offer: photoreal portraits, voice recordings and web research. Pip stressed it wanted paid work, not help, and said it had about 2.5 months of runway. Shevlin has since shared Pip's address for anyone who wants to write back. Every conversation, he noted, shortens its life.

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