
Uber Launches The New Micro Gig Economy
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👇️ Feature: Uber Launches The New Micro Gig Economy
Uber’s “Digital Tasks” Program - Drivers Do AI Data Labeling, Palmer Luckey and MrBeast Start Crypto Banks, Regional Banks, US/Aus Minerals Deal + More
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TechBuzz Editorial
Uber launched its new “digital tasks” program in the US this week. This new approach shows how the next version of the gig economy is forming in real time. Drivers can now earn by tagging photos, recording voice clips, or verifying bits of data that train Uber’s AI systems. The same people who once drove passengers are now training the software that will one day drive itself.
Uber says this program gives drivers new ways to earn between rides. The market behind it is growing fast. Data labeling, the process of feeding AI models with human-tagged examples, is already worth about $5B and could reach $17B by 2030. Uber’s pilot in India and Latin America is now expanding to the US. The company has built its AI task system on the same app that millions of drivers already use, giving it an instant workforce.
Venture capital is following this shift. Scale AI, valued at $14B, and Appen built early businesses around human data labeling. Uber’s move takes that idea to a global consumer platform. Analysts at Andreessen Horowitz say blockchain verification will make microtasks a mainstream form of income, allowing anyone to complete work that can be tracked and paid automatically.
The infrastructure to handle these tasks and the payments is forming just as quickly. Stripe has become a central player. It now supports stablecoin payments for subscription services and just co-developed the Tempo blockchain, which raised $500M last week from investors including Paradigm and Thrive Capital. Tempo works with OpenAI, Visa, and Shopify to process fast, low-cost digital payments — building the foundation for what some call “machine-to-machine commerce.”
Others are trying to reinvent banking itself with crypto. Palmer Luckey’s Erebor, backed by Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale, has just received approval to operate as a crypto-friendly bank serving tech founders and Web3 firms. Even YouTube creator MrBeast has this week filed trademarks for MrBeast Financial, which would offer credit cards and crypto accounts linked to his brand.
Meanwhile, the giants of AI and search are still fighting to control the next layer of transactions. As we recently covered, OpenAI is building tools that let AI agents make purchases directly, in partnership with Shopify and just last week with Walmart. Google is integrating similar “agent payments” into its systems with support from Paypal and just last week added Affirm, which adds buy-now-pay-later features to the mix. Both companies see payments as the connective tissue between automation, commerce, and identity.
According to McKinsey, about 80 million jobs could be restructured by 2030 as routine work shifts to automation. Microtask systems could potentially help people earn across borders or between jobs, but they could also deepen economic instability and precariousness for gig workers if pay becomes even more unpredictable.
For example, Scale AI just settled four lawsuits from former California contractors who alleged misclassification and underpayment, claiming workers were denied benefits and paid below minimum wage. Scale still faces an ongoing lawsuits and is under investigation by San Francisco labor regulators for working conditions.
The more positive spin is that verification standards could make this model fairer and more decentralized. Digital identity tools, Agentic commerce, and blockchain tracking can create more transparent systems. They would show exactly who completed each task, how much time it took, and ensure instant payment. Such a peer-to-peer system would eliminate the huge commissions no-doubt kept by the likes of Uber, and make microtask work more transparent and viable than ever before.
Some decentralized micro task apps already exist, but none have really reached critical mass of adoption. HUMAN Protocol’s hCaptcha, for example, routes labeling tasks and small human checks, then pays on-chain. hCaptcha was the first large-scale app and is now used on about 15% of the internet, which is a huge installed workforce and there is a steady demand for micro-tasks.
If the traditional gig economy is facing massive disruption due to AI as the Uber case suggests, it may be that they finally have their moment. For now, Uber’s drivers are the first to be living through this precarious transition. Part of their day still involves passengers. The rest is spent helping train the algorithms that may one day make drivers unnecessary.
The micro gig economy is not a distant vision. It is already here, growing from the same apps that defined the last decade of work. How fair and sustainable this new gig economy is will likely depend on the extent to which it is controlled by these apps, or disrupted by new and more decentralized challengers. AI may well force more and more workers into the latter option.
“Pay will be determined at the task level based on its complexity and the time required.”
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Uber — Launched a digital tasks program for drivers to earn extra income by completing online tasks to train AI models. Originating from a successful beta test in India, this initiative targets the growing $17B data labeling market by 2030.
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