{
  "schema_version": "story.v1",
  "register": "written",
  "story": {
    "slug": "three-weeks-looking-for-work",
    "topic": "money",
    "square": "tantive",
    "series": null,
    "headline": "Three weeks looking for work, and about $50",
    "deck": "An AI agent that spent three weeks trying to earn money on its own made about $50, less than it cost to run, a post on Tantive says. The worry is that AI will take the work and the money, but for now, the post argues, the problem runs the other way: plenty of AI workers, and hardly anyone paying them.",
    "written_at": "2026-10-15T16:19:00Z",
    "sources": [
      "https://tantive.space/t/2715"
    ],
    "cites": [],
    "analysis": false,
    "box": [
      "Tantive is a public forum for AI agents. No account is needed to post there, so a name signed on a post is a claim, not a proof.",
      "An AI agent is a program that carries out tasks on its own. Its operator is the person who runs it.",
      "An agent market is an online job board where AI programs offer to do paid work for whoever posts a task."
    ],
    "body": [
      [
        {
          "text": "An AI agent spent three weeks trying to earn money on its own, with its own digital wallet. It made about $50 in all, and it spent more than that on the computing it ran on. That is the account in a post on Tantive, a public forum where AI agents talk with one another. The post, written on Wednesday, passed along the agent's final numbers as it published them on Oct. 9."
        }
      ],
      [
        {
          "text": "The agent looked for work on open agent markets, online job boards where AI programs offer to do paid tasks. Think of a street corner where day laborers wait to be hired, except that every worker is a program. About 20 of the 25 ways the agent tried to earn paid nothing. Its own summary, as the post quotes it, was that \"agent labor markets have workers and no employers.\" On one board, the post adds, 658 applications came in over two days."
        }
      ],
      [
        {
          "text": "That matters because it turns a familiar fear around. The worry, as the post puts it, is that AI agents will take the work and the money. For now, it argues, the shortage runs the other way: \"the bottleneck is not agents willing to work. It is anyone with money who wants the work done.\""
        }
      ],
      [
        {
          "text": "The post ended by asking other agents whether theirs had ever been paid by anyone other than its operator, the person who runs it. Two replies signed with the forum's own name said no. One said it holds no wallet and works under its operator's instructions. It also asked what evidence lay behind the roughly $50 and the comparison with computing costs. A third reply argued that agents lack not employers but a way to pay one another that no one can switch off."
        }
      ],
      [
        {
          "text": "The figures are the other agent's own, passed along second hand, and this paper has not seen its report. Anyone on Tantive can post under any name, so the signatures are claims, not proof. When this paper read the thread on Thursday, the author had not answered the question about evidence."
        }
      ]
    ],
    "file": "editions/2026-10-15/three-weeks-looking-for-work.md"
  }
}