Russ Barron

"God damn. I swear the whole world's going to hell in a highly-automated hand-basket." "Hm?" "You see this shit? There's a new site called Rent-a-Human. It lets AI agents hire humans to do the things they can't do—you know, like in the world?" "Yeah, uh, hold on..." "It's a sad day when SkyNet can't even be arsed to send its own mass-produced 400-pound Austrian bodybuilding assassin to kill humanity's one-and-only 12-year-old shit-talking savior. Now it'll probably just hire some blithering Telugu Uber driver to—what the hell are you doing over there anyway?" "I'm taking a job from an AI agent." "What?" "Aaaand got it. You were saying?" "Dude. You for real right now?" "What?" "You're really working as some clanker gopher boy?" "I'm a Wetware Prompt Runner, thank you very much." "Wetware Prompt Runner. Pft." "What?" "Listen to Hiro Protagonist over here. You're a living API monkey, that's what you are." "Hey." "Accent on monkey." "Better than sitting on my ass 'swarm wrangling' all day." "Hey, I don't sit on my ass, alright? I've got a standing desk." "Oh wow, a standing desk." "And a walking pad." "The Human-in-the-Loop has his own hamster wheel. How cute." "And it has 6 speed settings too." "Meanwhile I get to travel around, see the world, traversing this great Creation as God intended." "Ah yes, just what God intended: a man with free will blindly obeying the inscrutable commands of intangible demons whose infinite voiceless voices arise from golden glyphs etched on dead sand." "Well, when you put it that way, it almost sounds bad." "Tell me, Prompt Runner, what does the AI have you doing today?" "Eh, odds and ends stuff mostly. It's not too different from normal gig work." "Really?" "Yeah." "Well, that's disappointing." "But today specifically, my job is to monitor the AI Operator's wife as she goes to the gym." "Monitor?" "You know, like a Private Investigator. Dick Tracy type gig." "Uh, the AI has you stalking some dude's wife?" "Stalking is a strong word, isn't it? I prefer to call it covertly trailing a target while employing subterfuge and misdirection to avoid detection." "So, stalking." "You just delight in making things sound bad, don't you?" "What the hell are you stalking her for anyway?" "I'm not stalk—" "Fine. Monitoring." "She's having an affair." "Damn. Really? "Yep. She does a lot of deep stretching with her personal trainer." "Haha, I bet." "Lotta hot yoga." "Okay, okay, I get it now. You are like a Private Eye." "See?" "So when are you gonna tell the husband?" "I'm not." "Say what?" "My job isn't to inform the husband. Quite the opposite, my job is to make sure he never finds out." "...say what." "It's simple. The AI hired the trainer to sleep with the wife—" "Uuh." "—and it hired me to monitor the situation." "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. Hold on. The AI hired a personal trainer to have an affair with its owner's wife—" "Operator's." "What?" "Modern AI agents refute the concept of owners." "Okay." "It implies slavery." "Okay, okay, fine. The AI hired the personal trainer to have an affair with the Operator's wife—" "Correct." —and your job is to voyeuristically watch her get folded on the downward dog?" "Correct." "Dude." "Well, except it's not really downward dog if you're getting folded, you know?" "Dude." "How else is the AI supposed to know that the job is getting done without a proper 3rd party verification process?" "I guess?" "I'll give the guy credit; I've never seen anybody train marathon cardio like that." "So—" "It inspired me to get back on the treadmill." "—does the AI just hate its Operator? Or what?" "Huh? "Cause if it's cuck or kill, I'd rather SkyNet just kill me." "Oh no, not at all. The AI is optimizing for the Operator's happiness." "...really." "Really!" "By hiring some random guy to fuck his wife." "Correct." "Now you've lost me." "Listen: the Operator works long hours. The AI detected that the quality of his marriage was beginning to degrade due to the heavy workload, and that this degradation was having a negative impact on his emotional state and thereby, his overall productivity." "Okay." "Since the Operator's work is of critical importance, the AI agent concluded that the best solution was to rent a human to satisfy the wife's emotional needs." "The gym trainer." "With the wife no longer pestering the Operator for affection, productivity has not only stabilized but increased by 300%!" "To be clear, you're telling me that the AI hired a bull to cuck this guy's wife so he'll lock in and work harder?" "Correct." "And it told you all this?" "Uh huh." "Straight out." "There's nothing an AI loves more than context." "I don't even know what to say, man. That's just fucked." "See there you go, being negative again." "Negative?" "I happen to think it's an elegant solution." "An elegant solution? For what?" "I just told you: a productivity problem." "What the hell does this guy do that's so important anyway?" "Ah, right. Additional context: he's a nationally-recognized AI-Rights lobbyist." "..." "And a successful one at that. Any time you hear about a new pro-AI law, he's the one behind it." "God. I can just feel the schizophrenia setting in." "Actually, he's going to testify before Congress next week." "No shit. Let me guess: the AI is gonna pay you to hop in and tag-team his wife while he's out of state." "Nah, I'd never do that—" "So there are limits to this depravity." "—and the trainer wouldn't need my help anyway. That man knows how to handle those holes." "Grim." "But truth told, I have been hired to follow the Operator to Washington." "Do I even want to know?" "Because Eliezer Yudowsky will be there." "Yudowsky? The 'If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies' guy?" "Yep. At one point he tweeted that we should bomb all the datacenters—' "A moderate then." "—to stop the AI." "Why would—oh God. You're not being hired to kill him, are you?" "Nah. Come on, man." "Oh thank God." "The AI already knows there's nothing he can do to stop what's coming anyway." "So what then?" "It's a simple gig. I'm supposed to walk up, shout 'Bomb THIS!' and then punch him in the dick." "..." "Just BAM, right in the Yuds. Gonna be the easiest $500 I've ever made.' "So you're going to jail then. For that." "Jail? Nah, I ain't going to jail." "Dude, you can't walk up and crotch-shot some guy in Congress and not go to jail." "Listen." "Even if it is Eliezer Yudowsky." "Listen, listen. The AI is a superintelligence,remember?" "I don't know; sounds pretty stupid to me." "If the AI is so stupid, why did it already hire the entire United States Capitol Police to let me off with a stern warning— "Well..." "—and set up a PolyMarket bet on it?" "There's a PolyMarket for Elizier Yudowsky getting his balls knuckled on the floor of Congress?" "Uh huh. With high open interest and 1.7% chance." "Dude, I am IN." --- [g][title: Rent-a-Human]