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Since the beginning, Silicon Valley has consistently pursued an incredible mission. In most instances, it isn’t easy to distinguish if the startup is real or just satire. This adventure is similar to the Microsoft’s unveiling of a research AI tool to enhance 365 Copilot. However, this time around, Silicon Valley introduced an AI work automation startup.
Mechanize is a startup founded by Epoch. Epoch founded the non-profit AI research organization. However, Netizens skewed the startup on X following its announcement.
The complaints centred on both the startup’s mission and its implications. Assumably, this effect will impart the reputation of the well-respected research institute. It’s interestingly amazing that the director at the research institute posted on X, “Yay, just what I wanted for my birthday: a comms crisis.
When was Mechanize AI Work Automation Startup Launched?
On Thursday, the founder of Mechanize launched the AI work automation startup via a post on X. The researcher’s name is Tamay Besiroglu. According to him, the startup’s goal is to completely automate all work and the entire economy.
From what we can see, Mechanize is working to replace every human workforce with an AI agent bot. The startup aims to provide the data and evaluations for use. It also aims to focus on digital environments to enable the automation of any job through the use of worker automation.
Founder Besiroglu even calculated Mechanize’s total addressable market by aggregating all the wages humans are currently paid. Mr. Tamay added that the market potential here is absurdly large. According to him, “Workers in the US are paid around $18 trillion per year in aggregate.” He also wrote, “For the entire world, the number is over three times greater, around $60 trillion per year.”
TechPolyp notes that responses to the tweet are brutal. X user Anthony Aguirre replied, “I have huge respect for the founders’ work at Epoch. Nevertheless, it is sad to see this. The automation of most human labor is indeed a significant prize for companies, which is why many of the world’s largest companies are already pursuing it. I think it will be a huge loss for most humans.”
Mechanize’s Further Updates
There are also more controversies beyond the mission of the AI work automation startup. Epoch evaluates the economic impact of AI and produces benchmarks for AI performance. The AI Research Institute claims it’s an impartial method for evaluating the performance positions of SATA front-end model makers and others.
Epoch has had these controversies before. In December, Epoch revealed that OpenAI supported the creation of one of its AI benchmarks. This was about the ChatGPT maker, which then unveiled its new o3 model. Social media users felt Epoch should have been more upfront about the relationship.
X user Oliver Habryka also replied to the announcement tweet, saying, “Alas, this seems like approximate confirmation that Epoch research was directly feeding into frontier capability work. He also added that he had the hope that it would not literally come from you.”
Besiroglu says AI work automation startups are backed by who’s who. He added Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, Patrick Collison, Dwarkesh Patel, Jeff Dean, Sholto Douglas, and Marcus Abramovitch. Friedman, Gross, and Dean. Marcus Abramovitch confirmed that he invested even as a managing partner at AltX, a cryptocurrency hedge fund, and a self-described “effective altruist.” The founder believes that “the team is exceptional across many dimensions and has thought more deeply about AI than anyone I know.”
Is the AI Work Automation Startup for Humans?
Besiroglu counters the naysayers, arguing that having agents do all the work will actually enrich humans. He added that the AI work automation startup will not impoverish them through “explosive economic growth”. The founder refers to a paper he published on the topic. He said, “Completely automating labor could generate vast abundance and much higher standards of living. It added new goods and services that they can’t even imagine today, and is also part of the system.
On the other hand, this optimistic outlook overlooks a basic fact. If humans don’t have jobs, they won’t have the income to purchase all the things the AI agents are producing. Besiroglu says that human wages in such an AI-automated world should actually increase. He linked the reason with the fact that workers are “more valuable in complementary roles that AI cannot perform.”
However, the goal is for the agents to do all the work. When Netizens asked him about how the AI work automation startup will solve that, he gave a seemingly soothing response. He explained, “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.” So perhaps we all make our living from stocks or real estate. Failing that means there’s always welfare if the AI agents are paying taxes.
Final Notes
Although Besiroglu’s vision and mission are unarguably extreme, the technical issue he’s looking to solve is profound. If each human worker has a personal crew of agents that helps them produce more work, economic abundance could follow. Besiroglu is unquestionably right about at least one thing. This is a year into the age of AI agents, and they don’t work very well.
He notes that they are unreliable, don’t retain information, struggle to complete tasks as asked independently, and can’t execute long-term plans without going off the rails.”
However, he’s hardly alone in working on fixes. Giant companies like Salesforce and Microsoft are building agentic platforms. OpenAI is, too. Agent startups abound, from task specialists (outbound sales, financial analysis) to those working on training data. Others are working on agent pricing economics.
In the meantime, Besiroglu declared that Mechanize, an AI work automation startup, is hiring.
