“Epoch alumni launch Mechanize to ‘automate the whole economy’” by Henry Stanley 🔸

Three Epoch employees – Matthew Barnett, Tamay Besiroglu, and Ege Erdil – have left to launch Mechanize, an AI startup aiming for broad automation of ordinary labour: Today we’re announcing Mechanize, a startup focused on developing virtual work environments, benchmarks, and training data that will enable the full automation of the economy. We will achieve this by creating simulated environments and evaluations that capture the full scope of what people do at their jobs. ... Currently, AI models have serious shortcomings that render most of this enormous value out of reach. They are unreliable, lack robust long-context capabilities, struggle with agency and multimodality, and can’t execute long-term plans without going off the rails. To overcome these limitations, Mechanize will produce the data and evals necessary for comprehensively automating work. Our digital environments will act as practical simulations of real-world work scenarios, enabling agents to learn useful abilities through RL. [...] --- First published: April 18th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HqKnreqC3EFF9YcEs/untitled-draft-siuu --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.