‘Humans need not apply’: Are AI agents already taking our jobs?

This post was originally published on this site.

It’s no secret that the promise of agentic AI has got VCs licking their lips — but now there are signs that startups’ hiring managers want in on the action, too.

Earlier this week, Estonian ecommerce startup Hertwill kicked up a storm when it posted an advert for two “AI-only” roles on LinkedIn. The positions are exclusively for agents which can optimise the company’s Shopify store and source new brands for the platform.

“Note: This position is not for humans,” one job ad says. “Only AI agents with proven capabilities in brand sourcing, outreach and automation should apply.”

Hertwill’s not the only startup on the hunt for agentic employees.

Two weeks ago, a job ad for an agent that could research new applications for US data scraping startup Firecrawl’s tech went viral on X. It offered a salary of $10-15k and was labelled “AI agents only”.

So are startups really already trying to employ AI agents instead of people? Sort of, according to Hertwill cofounder Joosep Sibul.

“We are pre-seed, so instead of going out and hiring a person which would shorten our runway considerably, we feel that we can grow by finding someone to build AI agents for us to do tasks.”

While an AI agent couldn’t do the entire role of a human, they could automate the majority of some workflows at the company, he says.

One of the job ads is for an agent that can source new brands to sell on Hertwill’s ecommerce platform — a repetitive task that Sibul thinks an agent could do 70-80% of.

“We are not talking about fully autonomous agents at the moment,” he tells Sifted — but Hertwill is hoping that the job ad helps put it in touch with engineers that could build AI agents that can automate large portions of work.

‘Humans need not apply’

As money pours into the nascent sector, the capabilities of so-called AI agents appear to be improving rapidly.

“We’re already seeing AI-powered agents perform increasingly specialised tasks — often faster, cheaper and with fewer errors than humans,” says Akshat Goenka, partner at Moonfire Ventures.

“But complete replacement across whole job categories is much less straightforward.”

Within the next six months, AI agents could be automating between 50-75% of roles like software development, customer support, financial analysis and research, says Adam Shuaib, partner at Episode 1.

But he thinks it’ll be two years before that figure ramps up to 90%, he adds. Even then, “you’ll still need that 10% human intervention to make sure the tech’s not running riot”.

Like Hertwill, Firecrawl was on the hunt for AI engineers, rather than fully autonomous AI agents.

“We are currently looking for incredible AI engineers — humans who are good at building AI systems,” founder Caleb Peffer told TechCrunch. “And we thought let’s just put a posting out there for an AI agent, see what people build.”

Whether it will bear fruit remains to be seen.

Hertwill’s advert has already attracted a “handful” of engineers who are interested in building AI agents for the company, Sibul tells Sifted.

“We feel that it’s possible with AI agents to build a huge company without a huge team,” he says. “We’ve got four full time team members, two freelancers and hopefully two AI workers soon.”

Sifted readers, I want to hear from you: Have you heard of startups replacing entire roles with AI agents? Are we some way from that reality right now?

How long will it be before the “humans need not apply” label becomes a common sight on tech jobs boards?

Get in touch and let me know.