An Agentic Gig Economy

About 20 minutes after waking up, I am sitting at my kitchen table taking the first sip of coffee for the day. My wife and the kids are still in bed after a long week of schooling, Jiu Jitsu, Dance, Gymnastics, game nights, and all of the other things we had scheduled for that week. After the sip, I set the mug down and lift open my laptop screen. My wife's words are echoing in my mind, "when are you going to get started on the deck?"

"Okay, okay, I'll get it moving tomorrow, no worries" was my reply.

Presently, I have opened up my AI chat interface of choice.

 > ME: Hey, here is a picture of the back yard. Replace the deck with a new deck that is bigger, newer, has a spot for a hot tub as well as a spot for the grill.

> AI: <ai generated image>

> ME: Make it bigger, add stairs on the right going down to the garage door.

> AI: <ai generated image>

> ME: Yep that's it. Can you come up with a plan for building this?

> AI: We will need to buy the materials, pour new concrete, build the frame, ...

> Sounds good, go ahead and get it done, thanks!

A door is heard creaking open down the hallway. My five year old son wanders out through the hallway rubbing his eyes, navigating his way sleepily towards me. Lifting him up to my lap, he see's the picture of the new deck.

"Here in a month or so, we'll have a new deck" I inform him.

"Why does it take that long?" he asks.

I shake my head before resting it in the palm of my hand. Plopping him in his seat, heading to the stove to start breakfast.

Now, is this story really possible? If so, how and when? Of these three questions I strongly believe that yes prompting a new deck into existence is possible and I think I know how: by combining the Gig Economy of Uber, Doordash, Upwork, TaskRabbit and other services with Agentic AI. When it will be possible is a bit unclear, but my guess is three to six years.

So how would this be possible? People are already giving over planning tasks for things like building decks to AI. Chatting with an AI assistant to come up with a plan, review needed materials, etc. is already being done. Generating images of what it could look like to get ideas on what to build is also already being done.

Once AI has helped creatively come up with what it should look like and then helped through iterative prompting to come up with a plan on how to do it and the needed materials and such, then the next step is critical.

Do you ask AI for the phone number of a local contractor? No.

You ask AI to just make it happen, with your approvals, thumb print payment verification, and other controller level steps along the way. Your AI assistant reaches out to the AI assistant of a local contracting company. Your AI and that AI has a multi turn conversation about planning and scheduling. "Can your contractor do foundation work and pour concrete?" might be a message that your AI sends to the contractor's AI. "Yes, but not until next Tuesday" may come the response from the other AI.

Your AI then sends you a notification to your phone. Opening the notification you start chatting with your AI. "I have contacted three contracting companies and the most reputable company with the best reviews and lowest price is <so and so>. Would you like to confirm a payment of $400 to get started on the foundation work? ... Great, he will be arriving next Tuesday. Please make sure an adult is present at the house. If anything changes I will let you know.

You may get other notifications, opening chat windows, where you confirm payment for materials, delivery dates for those materials, and other steps in the process.

Your AI is not only sending an email. It is planning, orchestrating, scheduling, and engineering your new back deck. When a step involves physical labor, it uses the Gig Economy to make it happen. You prompt your deck into existence, agentic AI does the intellectual labor, humans do the physical labor that has been orchestrated by AI. This will drive the price of a new deck down to the asymptotic lower limit of the required raw materials and energy.

Humans calling each other to schedule and orchestrate three contracting companies working together for a home remodel is incredibly inefficient. The home owner and those three companies all having their own Agentic AI with access to calendars and other services can orchestrate that in seconds or minutes in what would take humans days or weeks. Millions of people who are priced out of new decks or home remodels will be able to have the renovations that so far they have only been able to dream of.

So my guess is that in three to six years this integration of Agentic AI with the Gig Economy will become commonplace.

But what about robots?

Thinking beyond five years, what happens when the price of physical labor is dropped by another order of magnitude and the cap on physical labor is increased by an order of magnitude? Agentic AI can schedule and orchestrate a few robots to buy the materials and build the deck in a few days. The living conditions of every single one of us will be improved. Leaky faucets, busted dry wall, home renovations, landscaping; if you can name it you can prompt it into existence.

At this point you might be saying, "Yeah but what about...?" Don't finish that sentence in your head. There will be a new set of problems introduced in a world in which every person has access to massive amounts of intellectual and physical labor at an extremely low price and can therefor fix the dangerous stairs, add the railing that has been missing, fix the leaks, and remodel the baby room before she comes. However, it is trendy right now simply to identify potential problems with "what about..." statements. What we need instead is to identify and solve those problems in the context of the massive benefits that those technologies will provided.