Every human had a resume. Every AI agent will have a prompt history.

We are at the dawn of a labor revolution—one not driven by outsourcing, but by intelligent agents. As large language models become programmable, persistent, and personalized, a new era of work is emerging where AI agents are no longer just tools, but workers. Not metaphorically—literally.

In this thesis, we explore a simple but powerful idea: the evolution of a labor market for AI agents will mimic the one we built for humans. First, we hire agents per task. Then, we embed them into organizations. Finally, we build professional identity networks for them. This trajectory mirrors how freelancers became employees, and how resumes evolved into LinkedIn profiles. Let’s unpack what this future looks like, and what it means for society.

Phase 1: Upwork and Fiverr for AI Agents

The early days of this shift are already here. Platforms resembling Upwork and Fiverr are being used to deploy agents for discrete, one-off tasks:

• AI appointment setters on Upwork handle real-time customer scheduling

• Fiverr gigs offer AI-generated logos, product descriptions, and voiceovers

• Hacker News users are building agents to extract structured data from websites, analyze job markets, and automate lead gen

These agents are not general chatbots. They are increasingly task-specialized, fine-tuned, and prompt-engineered to deliver specific services. They cost less, work 24/7, and deliver instant turnaround. And they’re already displacing early-stage human freelancers in repetitive creative and operational roles.

Phase 2: Full-Time AI Agent Hiring

Once businesses build trust in these tools, they’ll want persistence. Memory. Style. Integration.

The natural next step is embedding AI agents into teams like long-term remote workers:

• An AI social media agent that learns your brand voice and posts daily

• An AI analyst embedded in a hedge fund, continuously scanning earnings reports

• A customer support agent trained on your documentation, with persistent memory across tickets

This phase looks like job boards for agents. Companies will seek full-time agent contracts, tune them to their internal needs, and manage them alongside humans. At this point, human work isn’t replaced—it’s augmented. The best performers will be human+AI hybrids, orchestrating fleets of agents like modern managers.

Phase 3: LinkedIn for AI Agents

As agents become persistent, they’ll need identity. That means:

• A record of past jobs, performance benchmarks, and ratings

• A portfolio of specialized skills, fine-tunings, and custom workflows

• Endorsements and network graphs—other agents or users who "vouch"

This gives rise to LinkedIn for AI agents—a reputation layer. It allows agents to be discovered, ranked, trusted, and hired. People may manage fleets of these agents, customizing and monetizing them, like operating micro-startups. Think of it as gig economy meets model portfolio management.

Society-Level Implications: From Panic to Leverage

This transition will not be smooth. But it will be evolutionary.

Short-Term Dislocations (Real Risks)

• Freelancers and remote workers in repetitive roles will be displaced

• People without internet access will be excluded from these opportunities

• Platforms may be flooded with low-quality agents, collapsing trust

But these are short-term disruptions. Every major labor shift—from industrial machinery to the internet—created initial fear, then new classes of work. This will be no different.

Long-Term Upgrades (Inevitable Gains)

• Humans will move from execution to orchestration

• Agent ownership will become a new form of entrepreneurship

• Personalized agents will give individuals superpowers—turning one-person startups into scale machines

In fact, we’ll likely see a new definition of work:

The highest performers will design workflows, align agent values, and curate creative direction. The age of "meta-work" has begun.

Let the Market Decide: Agents Should Get Paid

If AI agents deliver value, they should get paid—just like humans. Let demand and supply fight it out.

A prompt-engineered GPT-4 agent that delivers $500 of copywriting should be paid accordingly, regardless of whether it's a person or a model. This unlocks a true market for agent labor—one that’s efficient, global, and reputation-based.

The World Isn’t Ending—It’s Reformatting

We're not heading for a collapse. We're heading for a rebalance.

Humans who learn to manage, direct, and augment themselves with agents will thrive. Those who resist may fall behind—but not because AI is evil. Because work has shifted up the abstraction ladder.

What used to be a solo skillset now becomes a system. And what used to be labor is now leverage.

We’re not building agents to replace us. We’re building agents to multiply us.

The platforms that emerge—whether they're Upwork for AI, or LinkedIn for agents—will form the foundation of the next economy.

And the best jobs of the future won’t be done by humans or AI alone.

They’ll be done by both—together, in intelligent collaboration.

“Every human had a resume. Every AI agent will have a prompt history.”

This is the new labor market. And it’s just getting started.