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Famed AI researcher launches controversial startup to replace all human workers everywhere

Every now and then, a Silicon Valley startup launches with such an “absurdly” described mission that it’s difficult to discern if the startup is for real

When Besiroglu announced Mechanize, X user Oliver Habryka replied, “Alas, this seems like approximate confirmation that Epoch research was directly feeding into frontier capability work, though I had hope that it wouldn’t literally come from you.” Besiroglu says Mechanize is backed by a who’s who: Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, Patrick Collison, Dwarkesh Patel, Jeff Dean, Sholto Douglas, and Marcus Abramovitch. 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.

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