Famous AI researcher Tamay Besiroglu has launched a controversial startup called Mechanize with the goal of fully automating everything and handing over the entire economy to AI.
TechCrunch Report Tamay Besiroglu, a prominent AI researcher and founder of the non-profit AI research institute Epoch, has launched a new controversial startup called Mechanize. The company’s mission, described by X’s Besiroglu, is “full automation of all tasks” and “full automation of the economy.” The announcement sparked a heated social media debate questioning the ethical implications of replacing all human workers with AI agent bots.
Besiroglu’s vision of mechanization involves providing the data, evaluation and digital environment you need to automate any job. He even went as far as to calculate the total addressable market for startups by consolidating all wages currently being paid to human workers and estimating it to be around $18 trillion per year in the US alone and $60 trillion worldwide.
Besiroglu revealed to TechCrunch that it would mechanize white-collar jobs to automate white-collar jobs rather than manual labor jobs that require robotics, but the response to startups was mostly important. Many X users expressed concern in the hands of those who own AI agents about the potential negative impact on human workers and the concentration of wealth and power.
The controversy surrounding mechanization is not limited to its mission. Besiroglu’s involvement in startups also raised questions about the fairness of Epoch, his AI lab, which analyzes the economic impact of AI and generates benchmarks for AI performance. Some social media users suggest that despite the institute’s neutrality, epoch research may have provided food directly to work.
Besiroglu defended his vision, arguing that full automation of labor could lead to “explosive economic growth,” a higher standard of living, and the creation of new goods and services that are unimaginable now. He refers to a paper published on this topic to support his claims. However, critics point out that if humans are replaced by AI agents in all their jobs, they do not have the income needed to purchase the goods and services that these agents produce.
In response to concerns about the potential decline in human wages in the Ai-Automated world, Besiroglu suggested that people could receive income from other sources such as rent, dividends, and government welfare. This statement is met with skepticism as it remains unclear how sustainable such a system is if AI agents are not paying taxes.
Despite criticism, Besiroglu argues that mechanization is working to solve legitimate technical problems. He believes that if each human worker has a personal crew of AI agents to help create more jobs, it could lead to economic abundance. However, he acknowledges that current AI agents are unreliable and have a hard time keeping information, and it is difficult to implement long-term plans without falling off the rails.
Mechanize’s mission may be controversial, but it’s not just companies working to improve their AI agents. Huge companies like Salesforce, Microsoft and Openai have also built agent platforms, focusing on a variety of aspects of AI agent technology, from task specialization to training data and pricing economics.
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Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News, which covers the issues of freedom of speech and online censorship.
