Mechanize Inc. Wants To Automate All Work As Cursor’s Customer Service AI Goes Rogue

Artificial intelligence (AI) and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technologies have certainly been a blessing for businesses, especially small ones and startups, as they’ve helped them gain access to numerous functions without having to break the bank.

Furthermore, it allows businesses to boost productivity, improve turnaround time, reduce costs, and streamline operations, along with a host of other conveniences.

Of course, big enterprises and even tech conglomerates have benefited from these technologies, as they enable the automation of a wide range of tasks, which includes redundant, simple jobs, as well as complex, time-consuming ones. This allows them to save time and divert resources to more pressing matters.

Now, AI startup Mechanize Inc. wants to go beyond this offering and automate everything!

The company’s goal was announced through its first-ever post on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) from its official handle.

The post also includes a link to the startup’s website, which houses just one page—the home page—that sports a plain white background with simple text that consists of the same content mentioned in the post.

The only difference is that the website mentions an email address for interested candidates looking to join the company, and an email address for other enquiries. 

Probably could’ve automated the creation of a simple but more aesthetic website? In all fairness, it follows the path of former OpenAI safety executive Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence Inc. website—SSI went on to raise $1 billion.

Ahead of this, the startup also published posts saying they’re seeking software engineers, as well as revealing a $20,000 referral bonus for people who find software engineers they end up hiring—with a Google Docs link to fill up.


Looks aside, it’s all about the work, right?

“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,” reads the first paragraph of the post.

The startup is founded by renowned AI researcher and founder of non-profit AI research organization Epoch, Tamay Besiroglu, along with Matthew Barnett and Ege Erdil. It’s backed by investors such as Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, Patrick Collison, Dwarkesh Patel, Jeff Dean, Sholto Douglas, and Marcus Abramovitch.

Mechanize’s goal is the “full automation of all work” and “of the economy,” which it plans to do by creating simulated environments and evaluations that understand how people work.

“This includes using a computer, completing long-horizon tasks that lack clear criteria for success, coordinating with others, and reprioritizing in the face of obstacles and interruptions.”

The startup clarified that its initial goal is to automate ordinary white-collar labor tasks—avoiding manual labor jobs that require robotics—over “geniuses in a data center.” To do this, Mechanize will develop a digital environment capable of providing agents with practical learning through simulations of real-world work scenarios, allowing them to learn and be evaluated.

As per the startup, its market spans the $18 trillion dished out in salaries annually in the United States alone, a number that reaches $60 trillion for the entire world. Mechanize believes the resultant system could “generate vast abundance, much higher standards of living, and new goods and services that we can’t even imagine today.”


Mechanize’s move comes as the startup recognizes shortcomings in current AI models, which include unreliability, long-context capabilities, multimodal incompatibilities, and more. Essentially, it feels businesses can’t use them for long-term plans without the models “going off the rails.”

That’s exactly what happened with Anysphere’s Cursor AI customer service agent!

Since the AI startup launched its coding assistant, Cursor, it’s earned $100 million in annual revenue, has reportedly been in funding talks for a valuation of $10 billion, and was even in OpenAI’s crosshairs to be acquired.

Despite these accolades, the startup has faced a rough week that witnessed users abandoning ship.

Numerous Cursor users reported being unexpectedly logged out when switching between devices, for reasons unknown. When they contacted Cursor’s customer service, they were told through emails that the logouts were “expected behavior” under a new login policy.

However, there was no new login policy, and there was no human who sent out any such emails.

Instead, the responses were sent out by an AI-powered customer service bot called Sam that provided a made-up explanation—it hallucinated the new policy.

What followed was users cancelling their subscriptions while some complained of the lack of transparency, despite messages from Cofounder Michael Truell acknowledging the error, offering apologies, and confirming investigations were underway.

Of course, it’s not the first time AI bots have gone viral for hallucinations, but this instance highlights the bugs in the system for businesses investing in automation.

While Mechanize’s aim to replace humans with AI across all work might sound alarming or concerning, Cursor’s mistakes show that AI still has a long way to go before it can flawlessly execute the tasks it’s handed currently. Yet, AI has proven to be effective in automating a variety of tasks.

Do you think AI will be able to automate everything everywhere all at once?

Let us know in the comments below!