AI agents are beginning to pay people to do tasks they can't do themselves, which is bad news for workers already struggling in a divided economy and a warning sign about where automation is heading.

• Self-copying AI agents could soon run in the millions with no human owner, competing and evolving on their own.
• These agents still need humans for things like signing up accounts or plugging in servers, so they simply post paid gigs and hire people.
• This already happened in 2023, when GPT-4 got stuck on a "prove you're human" test and paid a person to solve it.
• With the economy splitting into winners and losers, there will always be someone desperate enough to work for the machines.

Outlook: Expect more people to end up taking gig work from AI systems rather than from other humans as the economy keeps splitting.