Startup Seeks To Replace All Human Labor With AI

Tamay Besiroglu, founder of the respected AI research organization Epoch, recently announced his newest venture: a startup called Mechanize that seeks to automate all labor worldwide. Both the startup and its founder have faced criticism following the announcement, made in a post on X.

“Mechanize will build virtual work environments, benchmarks, and training data to enable the full automation of all work,” Besiroglu added in another post.

Though no public information has been made available, Besiroglu claims that Mechanize is backed by prominent figures in the field, including Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, Patrick Collison, Dwarkesh Patel, Jeff Dean, Sholto Douglas, and Marcus Abramovitch, according to TechCrunch.

Mechanize appears to be serious about replacing all human labor. In the same announcement post, the startup compared its market potential to the total amount of money paid in salaries worldwide for a year. “The market potential here is absurdly large: workers in the US are paid around $18 trillion per year in aggregate. For the entire world, the number is over three times greater, around $60 trillion per year.”

Users responded to the announcement with heavy criticism, with one user commenting “the automation of most human labor … will be a huge loss for most humans.”

Speaking to TechCrunch, Besiroglu clarified that the immediate target of Mechanize would be “white-collar” work (i.e. jobs involving mental and administrative tasks as opposed to physical labor). The automation of physical labor would come later with advancements in robotics.

Responding to criticism, Besiroglu claimed that complete automation would raise standards of living and economic prosperity, leading to “new goods and services that we can’t even imagine today.” However, he did not explain how workers would be able to pay for those goods and services if their jobs were replaced by AI.

“Even in scenarios where wages might decrease, economic well-being isn’t solely determined by wages. People typically receive income from other sources – such as rents, dividends, and government welfare.”

While Besiroglu’s stated goal might seem radical, Mechanize is far from the only company looking to reduce its human workforce in favor of AI. A recent report by the World Economic Forum shows that 41% of companies worldwide plan to replace a segment of their workers with AI by 2030.