An American TV crew filmed a 24 year old Chinese engineer in his San Francisco apartment for a feature on remote workers who never leave home. He had not been to an office in eight months. AI handled his calls, his messages and every reply his bosses got, while he collected a salary from five companies at once.
On camera he said the line everyone screenshotted: going to five morning calls would be exhausting, so I push them all into AI and stay in VR.
His story was simple. Meta hired him from a research lab. The job was remote. He preferred meetings in VR. So he wore the headset all day. So nobody saw him.
The crew thought that was the story. It was not.
Pause at 0:25. The camera holds on the wall behind his desk for four seconds. Look at the shelf above it. Everyone saw one laptop. Almost nobody saw the other four. The four were not backups. The four were jobs.
Each laptop runs an AI trained on the way he writes. Each one joins the morning calls in his voice. They talk to each other so the same work never gets done twice. He sits in the VR headset and watches the five jobs unfold around him.
For months all five teams have been thanking him for being so responsive. None of them has ever been in the same call as another.
He still wears the same headset every morning. He still sits in the same chair. He still passes every review. He still has not told his mom about the other four jobs.
The crew came to film a remote worker who lived on a mattress on the floor. They left with a man who had not done a single day of work himself in eight months, while five American companies kept thanking him.
His AI replied to all five morning calls again today. He watched. They thought: he is really trying.