I’m not above doing some gig work to make ends meet. In my life, I’ve worked snack food pop-ups in a grocery store, ran the cash register for random merch booths, and even hawked my own plasma at $35 per vial.

So, when I saw RentAHuman, a new site where AI agents hire humans to perform physical work in the real world on behalf of the virtual bots, I was eager to see how these AI overlords would compare to my past experiences with the gig economy.

Launched in early February, RentAHuman was developed by software engineer Alexander Liteplo and his cofounder, Patricia Tani. The site looks like a bare-bones version of other well-known freelance sites like Fiverr and UpWork.

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Federal officials had warned that the new product from the online provider of weight loss drugs might be illegal.

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Joseph Yracheta was in charge of a repository that compiled and protected tribal health data. Then its funding was cut.

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The N.F.L. claims Guardian Caps reduce the risk of concussions. The company that makes them says, “It has nothing to do with concussions.”

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Agents use facial recognition, social media monitoring and other tech tools not only to identify undocumented immigrants but also to track protesters, current and former officials said.

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The tech giant has spent more than $6 million on TV ads in state capitals and Washington, with the message that data centers create jobs.

At least some of this is coming to light:

Doublespeed, a startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) that uses a phone farm to manage at least hundreds of AI-generated social media accounts and promote products has been hacked. The hack reveals what products the AI-generated accounts are promoting, often without the required disclosure that these are advertisements, and allowed the hacker to take control of more than 1,000 smartphones that power the company.

The hacker, who asked for anonymity because he feared retaliation from the company, said he reported the vulnerability to Doublespeed on October 31. At the time of writing, the hacker said he still has access to the company’s backend, including the phone farm itself.

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