will robots or humans do this??

In the few weeks that I spent as a virtual-assistant taskmaster, I realized that much of the busywork claimed by the apps is actually quite personal, often rewarding and occasionally transformative.

The boundary between the human and the artificial is slippery; Yohana emphasizes that it employs “actual humans (not A.I. chatbots) that can do the grunt work,” though according to Forbes, those humans are using generative A.I. to assist them with our tasks. When these services style themselves as “worker bees,” “secret helpers” or “fairy... See more

These apps are styled like cutesy helpmeets, and their names — Yohana, Ohai, Milo — would be at home on a Brooklyn day care roster. Though pitched to “busy parents,” they implicitly target affluent working mothers who are struggling to manage household tasks on top of work and child care, and who might even be convinced to spend some (though not... See more