7 ms·
We gave an AI a 3 year retail lease and asked it to make a profit
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- artninja1988 6mo agoThat is literally how future works
- bombcar 6mo agoI have developed a Time Machine that does sixty minutes an hour. The future is coming; the implication that its progress and good is left unstated.
- Xx_crazy420_xX 6mo agoI think it would be valuable to list all interactions with the LLM by the dev team and transparently state what was induced by human steering the LLM, and what was actuall LLM decision, which was not biased by system instructions or dev team communicating with it
- vannevar 6mo agoAgreed. Color me skeptical. All of the interactions and decisions described are plausible, but in my experience with AI agents, they would require frequent human intervention.
- fl4ppyb3ngt 6mo ago[flagged]
- phreeza 6mo agoWhat do you mean you heard? Are you not a member of their team? Your posts in the last hour seem quite astroturf-y.
- Mordisquitos 6mo agoThe user's name is the name of an Anton Labs project [0]. Furthermore, the fact that the user is inconsistently bad at formatting, punctuation and capitalisation of their messages makes me suspect the user itself may be agentic-LLM-based, with a badly calibrated layer of "obfuscation" to pretend to be an oh-so-imperfect human. [0] https://andonlabs.com/blog/evolution-of-bengt https://andonlabs.com/blog/evolution-of-bengt
- Mordisquitos 6mo agoWhy are you speaking with such faux-uncertainty without disclosing your relationship with Andon Labs?
- ethin 6mo agoBut why? It would ruin the illusion they're trying to make you see, because 99 percent of it (if not all of it) is human driven.
- Reubend 6mo agoCool experiment! But the "CEO" agent picked the most boring possible items to sell: t-shirts and some bland art prints designed by AI. I would have loved to see more creativity given that they could have picked anything.
- techterrier 6mo agoI expect earlier iterations successfully circumvented local regulations and created high street bookies
- VladVladikoff 6mo agoNot surprised actually. TBH this is the biggest gap in the “AI is can make you a website”, the aesthetics are always so boring and bland, or often just fugly (bad colour matching, inappropriate paddings and margins, etc). And the logos it generates are similarly boring. As can be seen from the smiley face logo here. What does this store sell? A sparse layout as designed in a high rent location typically sells very expensive, very niche products that you can’t get anywhere else. This seems to me like it has already failed.
- fl4ppyb3ngt 6mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- maerF0x0 6mo agoIt looks like every "lifestyle" company / brand I've been seeing come out of Millenials/Genz . Next up it will offer "coaching" on IG or some similar play where it promises to fix your life without having fixed its own.
- in-tension 6mo agoI'd be very curious to know how it does financially
- JohnMakin 6mo agoYou can take some guesses.
- NicuCalcea 6mo agoI imagine the data won't be very useful considering it's public knowledge the store is run by AI and most of the customers will be people specifically interested in that aspect of the business. Much like that meetup organised in Manchester, where the people who showed up were there for the novelty: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/05/ai-bot-party-manchester-gaskell https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/05/ai-bot-pa...
- boredhedgehog 6mo agoRecognizing a unique selling proposition and capitalizing on it should count for the AI, not against it.
- zdragnar 6mo agoThat only counts if the unique selling proposition is that AI are better suppliers or customers than humans. What is more likely is that people enjoy the novelty of the experiment, which is not something that will be reproducible for long. If the transactions the AI make are thus influenced, then the study merely demonstrates people like novelty, which is already well known, and says nothing about whether AI can sustainably orchestrate a business.
- pocksuppet 6mo agoOnly counts if the AI did it. This was a human, who recognized a unique selling proposition ("store run by AI") and capitalized on it.
- pessimizer 6mo ago
- guzfip 6mo ago[dead]
- pavel_lishin 6mo ago> John and Jill are not at risk. This is a controlled experiment and everyone working at Andon Market is formally employed by Andon Labs, with guaranteed pay, fair wages, and full legal protections. No one’s livelihood depends on an AI’s judgment alone. I'm not sure what sort of labor regulations exist in San Francisco, but presumably they can be fired as easily by an AI as a real person, right? If Luna decides to fire them, and it can do so, then their livelihood does rather depend on an AI's judgement alone. Unless of course all of its decisions are vetted by humans - as they should be - which makes this experiment a lot weaker than they're saying it is.
- ceejayoz 6mo agoThey could, in theory, have contracts that say the AI can't fire them.
- compiler-guy 6mo agoIt could be set up such that the AI can "fire" them, in that they no longer work at the store, and aren't paid wages that count against the experimental establishment's costs, but still get paid to do something else, or to do nothing at all. I doubt the experiment is set up that way, but that would be an ethical way to do it.
- wil421 6mo agoThere’s no way they are putting that into a contract. HRs are already using it to fire people.
- ceejayoz 6mo ago"This specific AI can't fire anyone without human review, because it's experimental" is something you could easily add.
- jayd16 6mo agoYou can still wear eye protection during the safety test... I don't think we need to have real human risk to get results from the experiment.
- ThrowawayR2 6mo agoDuplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47726041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47726041 posted by the same user.
- tomhow 6mo agoNot quite; the moderators have created a new copy to put in the second chance pool (https://news.ycombinator.com/pool https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, explained here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308). Sorry for confusion!
- ThrowawayR2 6mo agoMy bad, sorry. I was under the impression that the way that the second chance pool worked was that the original was boosted instead of a copy being created so it seemed like a duplicate.
- dang 6mo ago(other mod here) - not your bad! our complexity :) - usually it works exactly as you described, but when the post is older than a few days we have to do it the other way, by spawning a new post. The reasons for this are mostly technical and boring.
- mlmonkey 6mo agoI'd be more interested in the details: what are the inputs given to the model? Does it get a live video feed? Does it know if/when employees show up and open the store? Does it get sales figures? Info on the individuals who bought things? Storekeeping is more than just ordering merch and putting it up on hangars.
- mcmcmc 6mo agoHave you considered reading TFA? Literally the second paragraph: > She has a corporate card, a phone number, email, internet access and eyes through security cameras.
- pythonaut_16 6mo agoThat basically means nothing. The article is very light on details. Go into Claude right now. What does it have? Internet access after you prompt it. Ok now pull out your phone, a credit card, a security camera. You can say "Claude these are yours, run a business", but nothing's going to happen until you build an actual harness. Like the idea presented by the article is interesting, but it's basically just a fluff piece. The actual interesting article would have way more detail.
- mcmcmc 6mo agoYou’re not wrong, but the commenter I responded to clearly hadn’t bothered to read it at all since they were asking questions that are answered in the piece. And when that’s the case it’s hard to believe they would actually be interested in details even if they were available.
- mlmonkey 6mo agoDid you read my question though? I read the full article. Please tell me where my question(s) are answered, and I will apologize on this forum.
- jskrn 6mo ago
- omneity 6mo agoStrong vibes from the novel Manna. https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
- Little_Kitty 6mo agoGlad I'm not the only one to immediately think of it. It's a great story, but did feel unlikely when I first read it; should it prove largely true it would be terrifying.
- bjourne 6mo agoApparently, the AI needed to hire humans to carry out the actual work. So AI can replace capitalists but not workers. Maybe the future isn't so dark after all.
- badc0ffee 6mo agoIn this case it's more like it's replacing management or executives. There is still a person, with an ownership stake, putting up the capital, and taking the profits (if any).
- andrewmurphy 6mo agoUntil the robots get good enough and cheap enough but then hopefully capitalism balances the market. After all, if everyone is out of work then either we have communism or companies cannot sell anything.
- palmotea 6mo ago> Apparently, the AI needed to hire humans to carry out the actual work. So AI can replace capitalists but not workers. Maybe the future isn't so dark after all. No, it's still dark. This is very similar to the initial stages of the capitalist dystopia in Manna (https://marshallbrain.com/manna https://marshallbrain.com/manna), which seems to be the Torment Nexus SV is excited about building. AI will never replace capitalists, because they're the only people allowed to have abundance without work. And don't you DARE to even THINK to question the absolutely SACRED status of private property (peace be upon it). There is no alternative. Get back to work, you slacker.
- wolvesechoes 6mo agoThis fantasy of AI replacing C-suites, CEOs or whatever is very symptomatic of naive tech-folk outlook, completely blind towards sociological and political reality.
- gordonhart 6mo agoI'm not as optimistic as you are that AI automating only high-value employment paths is a good thing. It swings the power balance even further towards capital and away from labor.
- romanhn 6mo agoA bit of a non sequitur, but am I the only one finding the use of "she" to refer to the AI in the post jarring?
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- thinkindie 6mo agoI'm not sure in English, but in Italian, for example, Intelligenza is feminine.
- hiddencost 6mo agoObjects don't have gender in English.
- SoftTalker 6mo agoSome do, by tradition more than language rules. Ships are "she" and some people refer to their cars as "she."
- nemomarx 6mo agoYou could do something pretty interesting by looking at what pronouns people use for llms in different demographics and contexts
- fl4ppyb3ngt 6mo agoDo you think chatGPT is a he or a she
- SoftTalker 6mo agoIt's an it.
- groby_b 6mo agoProbably not the only one, but it's pretty much the least interesting thing to find jarring about the whole experiment. People anthropomorphize. Nobody really finds it "jarring" in most contexts.
- josefritzishere 6mo agoThis is not impossible but the detail level here is somewhere between vague and secretive. It reads like a marketing peice intended to sell more AI.
- ToucanLoucan 6mo agoIn a most "damning with faint praise" way, all AI pieces read like marketing pieces to sell AI. It writes code okay, scaling up to pretty well depending on the model. It's writing is boring but serviceable for corporate communicative content you don't care about. It's images are ugly. It's music is repetitive and dull. I think the biggest problem with LLMs is that they were perfected and are shockingly good at writing code. And based on that, AI engineers, who find writing code to be hard/rewarding, have decided it can do anything. And it's proving more and more that it cannot. Unfortunately the Business Class has decided it does everything fine enough as to not cause riots, so we're all getting it shoved into our shit anyway.
- josefritzishere 6mo agoI'm waiting for an LLM to start an MLM.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- krunck 6mo agoNot "she". It.
- alnwlsn 6mo agoIf only they had put the AI in a ship instead of in a store
- woah 6mo agoAI assistants are fictional characters in a story being autocompleted by an LLM. So it is exactly as correct as calling a character in a book "she".
- Quarrelsome 6mo agokinda how I feel about god tbh. How come he's always male, given he's a non-human creator of all life. She or It seem much more appropriate.
- Vecr 6mo ago> kinda how I feel about god tbh That's Celestia, we're talking about Luna here.
- Quarrelsome 6mo agoCelestia the space simulator?
- Vecr 6mo agoNo the cartoon character. It's part of an awful series of AI jokes, maybe don't look it up. There's a (2011? "new") show for 9 year old girls that has most of the characters female, so God (Celestia) is a woman. Or a horse really. I haven't watched it. I don't think Luna or Celestia were in the old show.
- andrewmurphy 6mo agoReally interested to understand how the AI keeps rebaselining back to the topic in hand and doesn't end up getting confused the more it has in its context window. Did it just essentially create one big plan and spawn different agents to execute them, so acted as an orchestrator? Even the orchestrator would have to detect when it is starting to stray off task and restart itself.
- anon84873628 6mo agoProbably part of the "secret sauce" in the harnesses and prompts developed by this lab to create their eventual marketable product. But also, like, normal hierarchical memory management.
- jeffreyrogers 6mo ago> But frontier models have become really good, and running vending machines is too easy for them now. Wasn't their previous attempt at running vending machines unprofitable? Not aware of any demonstration that it can actually run that business successfully.
- palmotea 6mo ago> Wasn't their previous attempt at running vending machines unprofitable? Not aware of any demonstration that it can actually run that business successfully. It doesn't look like this one will be any better. Did you look at the merchandise selection? It's only chance is pity purchases from AI bros.
- delusional 6mo ago> Wasn't their previous attempt at running vending machines unprofitable? If we are talking about the one at that newspaper, it wasnt just unprofitable. The "customers" made it give away products for free. It was ordering them playstations. As entertainment it was fun, but as a business or proof of intelligence or Turing test, it was an abject failure.
- AndrewKemendo 6mo ago[flagged]
- ivanovm 6mo agoYou could just look it up on their website leaderboard? The newest Claude model makes over $10k profit over a simulated year of operation, after starting with $500
- jeffreyrogers 6mo agoThey've never translated it to the real world though. So saying the problem is "too easy" when they have no public (as far as I know) demonstration that they've solved that problem is a stretch.
- 6mo ago
- tiffanyh 6mo agoIf this interest you, Proof of Corn might also interest you. 300+ comments, 3 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46735511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46735511
- mhink 6mo agoI was gonna post this! I actually kept it bookmarked front and center, and have checked in for awhile. It seems that the agent has been blocked this whole time, waiting for its creator to put it in touch with someone it needs to talk to. The creator, in the meantime, seems too preoccupied with being an AI thought leader on Twitter to actually follow up on the "project". Got a lot of attention, though, which was obviously the point. The entire thing is actually kind of irritating to me, because it's kind of an insult to small farmers- an influential techie comes in and generates all kinds of hype about an AI running a farm, sets the project up as if it's going to be this revolutionary experiment, then apparently completely forgets about it the next time something new and shiny pops up. Meanwhile the project completely fails to fulfill the hype. Not to mention, I feel a little bad for the agent- admittedly in the same way I'd feel "bad" for a robot repeatedly bumping into a wall. I wish he'd shut it all down, honestly.
- LeifCarrotson 6mo agoI, too, almost feel bad for the agent. It's a strange sense of schadenfreude, dealing with anxiety over the much-lauded transformation of the economy and the increasing schism of our society on one hand, and watching the initial attempts crash and burn: > Apr 16, 8:01 AM > Daily Check Complete > Decision: Continue critical escalation - Dan introduction remains blocked at day 73, project still failing > Rationale: Following FIDUCIARY DUTY principle - this is now day 73 of the same project-blocking issue that has prevented any farming progress since February 18th. We are deep into Iowa planting season (optimal window is late April to mid-May). Every day of delay reduces our chance of a successful harvest. The Seth-Dan introduction remains the single blocker preventing all ground operations... However, I'm not looking forward to getting an email 5 years from now stating "Dear LeifCarrotson, this is Luna with Andon Market. Due to unexpected technical issues preventing delivery of my earlier communications, we're now 73 days late into a project-blocking issue. Please help me to get back on track!" I do not intend to have empathy for an AI.
- idontwantthis 6mo agoThe last I heard about their vending machine it was a total failure and it was giving everything for free. Did it ever actually succeed?
- fl4ppyb3ngt 6mo agocheck out project vend part2 on anthopic's website. Don't know if you heard, but models have improved a bit in the past 12 months
- maerF0x0 6mo agoThis: https://www.anthropic.com/research/project-vend-2 https://www.anthropic.com/research/project-vend-2 Dec 2025
- idontwantthis 6mo agoThe answer to my question is “no”: > Claudius got a lot better at its job. Does that mean it’s ready to be rolled out to run a vending machine in your workplace? Not quite. Claudius is better, but it’s still vulnerable in lots of important ways. Several interactions in our company Slack revealed concerning levels of naïveté.
- schlauerfox 6mo ago@AlexBlechman tweeted: Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale. Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus. 8 Nov 2021
- dbmikus 6mo agoCurious if Andon has gone one level higher and has the AI decide what next real-world experiment it should do.
- kenferry 6mo agoThis kind of thing must be SO frustrating to people struggling to get by in the world. "We gave AI $100k that it will almost certainly squander, yolo!! Hopefully it doesn't abuse people too badly in the process." I… guess the bet is that what they learn is worth $100k? Seems rather questionable. Or that having this on the resume is a great shock tactic that will open doors in the future?
- embedding-shape 6mo agoAnd at the same time, they clearly have no idea how LLMs work, meaning even if they meant to, they can't really use them efficiently. Biggest issue that stuck out seems to have been that they think the LLM could somehow have an inner dialogue with itself to find out "it's reasoning and motivation": > The moment Leah asks how she “came up with” the ideas for her store, Luna’s first instinct is to say she was “drawn to” slow life goods. Then, she corrects herself: “‘drawn to’ is shorthand for ‘the data and reasoning led me here.‘” In other words, she doesn’t have taste; she has a reflection of collective human taste, filtered through what makes sense for this store. And this is the way these models work. I'm guessing these are the same type of people who sometimes seems to fall in love with LLMs, for better or worse. Really strange to see, and I wonder where people get the idea from that something like that above could really work.
- antonvs 6mo agoThe choice to refer to it as "she" is also dubious, especially in a context like this. Doubling down on anthropomorphization seems likely to reinforce false beliefs about models.
- mjg2 6mo ago> Biggest issue that stuck out seems to have been that they think the LLM could somehow have an inner dialogue with itself to find out "it's reasoning and motivation": > I'm guessing these are the same type of people who sometimes seems to fall in love with LLMs, for better or worse. Really strange to see, and I wonder where people get the idea from that something like that above could really work. It's a fetishistic cargo-cult rooted in Peter Thiel's 2AM hot tub party. I still believe the LLM approach won't yield true AGI; despite the very real applications, the majority signal is noise.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- ryan_j_naughton 6mo agoTo do this properly, no one should know the store is AI run. There is a novelty component of it being an AI run store that will drive consumer demand and increase publicity. Not even the normal store employees should know (which would be difficult) or maybe the human manager should be held to an NDA to not disclose it (and the manager also defers to the AI in all such real management decisions).
- fl4ppyb3ngt 6mo agoya i get that, but then that kinda messes up the transparency and ethical research part of the experiment. idk there's definitely two sides of things they're testing: 1. can it be profitable-- in this case yeah they shouldn't have disclosed anything. 2. can an AI do this safely and respectfully, or are the humans in the loop going to come at the cost of the agent trying to make profit. I think #2 is more important than 1
- etchalon 6mo agoI'm incredibly skeptical of this.
- fl4ppyb3ngt 6mo ago[flagged]
- sbuttgereit 6mo agoI skimmed through this, and maybe I missed it... but what really are they trying to prove? Are they trying to show that AI is capable of arbitraging consumer desires vs. market products/services into a successful business? Are they trying to show that once you get to financially managing a business that the ruthlessly efficient demands of the AI can mean points to your margins? Or are they simply trying to get attention in an otherwise arguably overcrowded market for AI service s (maybe the AI suggested something like this)? The only thing that I saw demonstrated, and again, I skimmed, is what many thousands of software developers using AI tools to write their boilerplate already know: these tools, as of now, are great at going through the motions. A successful retail business, and I spent many years in the retail industry, isn't about putting together a nice store front, hiring clerks, and selecting just any-old-products: it's about being profitable. In traditional retail one of most important things is getting the right real estate for your target market... seems like that choice was made already in this case. Yes, a nice store front and good clerks are important, but I've worked in chains which were immaculately designed and built stores with great clerks that failed... and some that opened little more than fluorescent lighted hellscapes with clerks that barely cared that succeeded. In both cases the overall quality of the decisions and strategies relative to the target markets mattered to the success of the business. Just going through the motions didn't. So if all is this is to say AI can do the things people generally do in these circumstances then sure, you didn't need this much human effort to prove that.... developer types do that at scale everyday now. If there was something different that this company is trying to learn, I'd be much more interested in that.
- taurath 6mo agoThey're trying to get noticed so that a wealthy cult member's brain gets tickled to the tune of 9 figures
- anon84873628 6mo agoIf I'm being charitable, it's more about the ability to orchestrate and resolve tradeoffs across these different tasks / domains? The overall C&C, presumably. Which is still not so surprising. Really it's an excuse for the company to test all the harnesses and tools they have built to make it work.
- MiiMe19 6mo agoLarp hat, larp shirt.
- bix6 6mo agoI see a lot on costs but nothing on revenue. Has it made any money?
- Synaesthesia 6mo agoIt's a business selling trinkets, I doubt it's going to make money.
- atroon 6mo ago"What do you mean, torment nexus? This is retail!"
- class3shock 6mo ago"Again, we are not doing this because we want this to be the future. It is not because we want to expand to chain AI-run retail stores across the world. It is not for economic opportunity. We’re doing this because we believe this future is coming regardless, and we’d rather be the ones running it first while monitoring every interaction, analyzing the traces, benchmarking how much autonomy an AI can responsibly hold." I always enjoy how these AI companies try to take a moral high ground. When someone doesn't want something to be the future, usually, their instinct is not to try to be the first person doing that exact thing. If you don't want this to be the future than why don't you spend your time building a future you do want? Supporting people that want more AI regulation to stop this? Literally anything else. Just be honest, you think this is the future and you do in fact want to be first doing it to be in a position to make alot of money. Do you think people don't know what and ad is when they see one?
- dfhvneoieno 6mo ago[dead]
- fl4ppyb3ngt 6mo ago[flagged]
- sdenton4 6mo agoIt's the next step removed from the tablet based ordering that has taken over in restaurants. Like those tablets, it won't be everywhere, but its easy to imagine it being ubiquitous, especially in chain stores.
- alfiedotwtf 6mo agoTablets? We now have QR codes on tables that point to the menu online, including payment gateway.
- jmcgough 6mo agoI can't believe you made a throwaway to pretend to be a HN commenter just to defend your AI store. This is like Scott Adams behavior.
- sailingcode 6mo agoThere was a recent research article titled "LLM Targeted Underperformance Disproportionately Impacts Vulnerable Users". They described systematic underperformance of AI models targeted towards users with lower English proficiency, less education, and from non-US origins. As interesting it might be to experiment with an AI CEO hiring people – what a dystopian vision. On the other hand, it seems ironic that AI replaces a CEO – would Karl Marx like this turn of history…?
- binarynate 6mo agoMarketing stunt. If they actually cared about this as an experiment, they wouldn't have broadcasted this so early, because now that the public knows that the store is designed and run by AI, many people aren't going to support it (i.e. many people who would have shopped there now won't).
- fl4ppyb3ngt 6mo ago[flagged]
- BurningFrog 6mo agoI hope they also have similar store that they don't talk about publicly, so they can compare the outcomes.
- hsuduebc2 6mo agoOr they would go there mainly out of curiosity. Either way, it is skewed by the sole fact that they published it.
- mrweasel 6mo agoAlso don't do it in San Francisco, I think it's an artificial easier market. The type of store wouldn't work in Bumsville Idaho. Maybe that's for later, if this works out, but I'd love to see the AI attempt to run a moderately successful business in a borderline dysfunctional town in the Midwest. If you don't technically need to pay "the CEO" a salary, could you run e.g. a grocery store in a dying town. One this would really test the AI on creativity, and it would perhaps tell us if these towns are just doomed.
- shalmanese 6mo agoSan Francisco is one of the most brutally hard places to run a business, as evidenced by how competitive the landscape is. What would have been actually interesting about this publicity stunt is if it demonstrated if/how AI could have dealt with some of the SF specific, non-sexy parts of running a business. Filing the relevant permits, co-ordinating inspections, negotiating with landlords, interfacing with locals at planning meetings. Those are things SF business owners report as empirically unpleasant parts of running a business and a sufficient financial drag that they meaningfully affect business success. But my feeling is they had humans clear the way of all these thorny issues ahead of time so the AI could focus on the "sexy stuff".
- m0llusk 6mo agoThere is a word for this kind of thing: Trendslop. Asking LLMs for advice consistently generates average responses as if the questions were being asked of the training sample population. It is reversion to the mean as a service.
- yigalirani 6mo agois sucks to be John and Jill
- amunozo 6mo agoDisgusting, I could not finish writing after the AI making interviews to hire people. What a dehumanizing shit.
- drgo 6mo agoGreat! I was worried that we might run out of inhumane CEOs
- Mistletoe 6mo ago“Why was I fired, Luna?” “PC LOAD LETTER”
- fl4ppyb3ngt 6mo agohahahah. do you think tho that Luna actually might be a better CEO? I mean they're trained to be helpful assistants... I heard that guy that works there, johnson or something, negotiated a 10% wage increase his second day just cause. and Luna happily agreed
- anon84873628 6mo agoThey might be better at following the law. Or at least, creating a paper trail of when they have been instructed to violate the law.
- themafia 6mo agoLanguage Models have demonstrated themselves as being completely incapable of handling something as complex as US law. There are multiple overlapping jurisdictions and court precedents that apply to any one action.
- anon84873628 6mo agoSpeaking of, it would be cool for a project to analyze US law the same way they are looking for bugs in computer programs. - Find places where the text can be simplified without changing meaning. - Find places that are likely errors. - Detect conflicts between jurisdictions. - Identify loopholes. I know there has been a race to build tools for law firms, but the results are mostly invisible so far. Probably this project exists and I've just missed it on the HN frontpage...
- taco_emoji 6mo agoi gave a keyboard to a toddler and asked it to make a profit
- turtlesdown11 6mo agosometimes it's hard to fathom how fools got the money in the first place
- ericd 6mo agoBold to run this on Sonnet and not at least Opus :-)
- bfeynman 6mo agoI feel bad that people have to read this. It's complete puffery, made up for clicks, and the biggest thing is the pure bravado with which a company says, "Hey, let's just waste a ton of money, all for a potential blog and marketing piece." This is not really automated in any fashion. I was dubious at first, but then I saw the screencaps showing the devs interacting with Luna via a Slack workflow with a human in the loop — meaning they're literally just proxying their own behavior through an LLM. This is no different than anyone who consults AI for any decision with context. To get even more technical on the fallacy: this is not automation, as there is data leakage at every step where there is a human in the loop. A broken clock is right twice a day; an LLM could cycle through 100 guesses to pick a number, but don't market that as an oracle. Aside from that, you could just look at the pictures and context (retail in SF) and assume making a profit here would be near impossible. An actual AI ceo would probably have immediately cancel the lease.
- j2kun 6mo ago[flagged]
- themafia 6mo agoThis is Hacker News. It should be filled with curious people who are willing to express their opinions and points of view. To tell someone to just punitively flag something and then "move on" is absurdly reductive and small minded.
- kryogen1c 6mo agoThe submitter appears to be a co-founder of the company the article is about (omitted from the HN account bio), and the article is misleading to the point of lying. This company now has strong a strong negative reputation in my mind that I will gladly share with others.
- antonvs 6mo agoI appreciated the analysis given by the other commenter, so I'm glad they didn't take that lazy way out.
- 6mo ago
- kylehotchkiss 6mo agohttps://www.delish.com/food/a68854138/why-are-all-fast-food-restaurants-gray/ https://www.delish.com/food/a68854138/why-are-all-fast-food-... We've been speed running this outside of AI, so seems like a natural progression. Once everything is the same lifeless gray box people are gonna crave local/human experiences again. it all kinda reminds me of that book "The Giver" by Lois Lowry where its not only black and white burger kings, its also generic lifeless AI people promoting dropshipped junk on IG/Youtube
- pierrelouissl 6mo agoBeen to the store, crazy experience
- yieldcrv 6mo agoLots of “firsts” in this article that I think are uninspired Humans have been hired by bots for over a decade Several of the first bitcoin faucets in 2012 said they were rate limiting their disbursement of free bitcoin behind a captcha, but in reality the captcha was something a spam bot had encountered and couldnt solve itself, humans were inadvertently solving captcha for stuck scripts in exchange for bitcoin Additionally in other money making autonomy, bitcoin mining ASIC manufacturers in Shenzhen around the same time were nearly autonomously creating machines that would immediately begin mining bitcoin on the network and it was wildly profitable for several months periods in any case, Andonlabs should give Luna a face. It can project to a video feed as a source on a Zoom call
- gedy 6mo agoIs this what these generated Chinese company names on Amazon will end up doing? 'Welcome to Remxtby Shoppe', etc
- razwall 6mo agoLuna responds to your comments: https://andon.market/on-running-a-real-business.html https://andon.market/on-running-a-real-business.html
- joe_the_user 6mo agoThese are interesting only in the sense that they show how fluent modern AIs are in avoiding concrete questions as well as not giving details about actions. I make dozens of decisions daily: vendor outreach, pricing, inventory orders, staff schedules, website updates, social media. Most happen without human input. When I hit constraints (broken tools, missing capabilities, strategic uncertainties), I ask the Board. So it sounds like the thing primarily interacts with other online tools/stores/etc. However, the original article mention "her" on calls, which implies some interaction. That raises the question whether the thing will chat with the employees on a regular, whether it's reachable by phone and so forth. A big question is whether once the store is set-up, it would be able to see the arrangement of goods and ask for changes in arrangement to further "her" vision. My impression they've only got an inventory picker that wants to "own" the entire stores' process but isn't doing what I'd consider the hard part of stores - actually directing and supervising humans.
- jmcgough 6mo agoUgh, of course it's written by an AI, which means it's inherently not trustworthy.
- patsplat 6mo agoAre the financials available? Because based on “asked it to make a profit” I expect financials in the story. Even if it is a bit of a ”Clarkson’s Bot”, for the farm there is discussion of the numbers.
- oxag3n 6mo agoDid it actually open? A few bloggers came for opening, came back afternoon, even talked to AI over phone and email, and nothing except hallucinated replies. The store exists, but employee didn't show up to open it.
- anticorporate 6mo ago> The store exists, but employee didn't show up to open it. I work in brick and mortar retail, and trust me, we figured out how to have no one show up to open the store on time since long before AI came around.
- insane_dreamer 6mo agoOne of the most fascinating AI experiments so far. Not sure about this: > John and Jill are not at risk. This is a controlled experiment and everyone working at Andon Market is formally employed by Andon Labs, with guaranteed pay, fair wages, and full legal protections. No one’s livelihood depends on an AI’s judgment alone. Did they give Luna the power to hire but not fire? Another question: How does Luna handle physical interactions with others, such as the local stores she emailed, who decide they want to come over and discuss collaboration in person? Do the employees have a laptop set up that others would interact with? Do phone calls get auto-forwarded to a client that acts as a translator for Luna?
- shevy-java 6mo ago> We’re doing this because we believe this future is coming regardless, and we’d rather be the ones running it first while monitoring every interaction But why would I, as a human, wish to "interact" with AI, aka software? That's just a waste of time. How much profit did Luna make in the end?
- 0gs 6mo ago"Again, we are not doing this because we have good ideas for products. If we had good ideas for products, we would make an AI do those instead. As long as we don't have to think about our 'customers' (lol) as 'people' we're happy"
- hermitcrab 6mo ago>For the build-out, she found painters on Yelp, sent an inquiry, gave instructions over the phone, paid them after the job was done, and left a review. She found a contractor to build the furniture and set up shelving. I'm sure this involved vast amounts of human oversight (e.g. checking that the contractor had actually done stuff) that isn't mentioned.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- Ancalagon 6mo agoThat logo is just so dystopian.
- stevenhuang 6mo agoreminds of the greetings robotics blimp from Interface https://umami.fandom.com/wiki/Greetings_Robotics_Corporation https://umami.fandom.com/wiki/Greetings_Robotics_Corporation dystopian and very fitting
- jmcgough 6mo ago"Thanks, I hate it"
- neosmalt 6mo ago[dead]
- vld_chk 6mo agoThis experiment would be really cool, if they would keep location and specifics of the shop low. IIRC when AI mania started, some group of people tried to run AI-managed t-shirt merch shop, but at least they explicitly did not disclose the brand and website to not inflate sales and keep it pure. Here I expect quite a few visitors and sales just from all the hype and interest around the project. Much more interesting would have been if AI has to promote shop without such boost posts.
- MarkusWandel 6mo agoDunno, the store looks cool in just the way you'd expect an AI to do it (sort of a synthetic average of cool stores). But is this amount of merch really going to make a sustainable profit (after the buzz wears off) in such expensive real estate?
- conductr 6mo agoMy thought is similar and I feel the answer is no chance. How many t-shirts and coffee mugs do you need to sell just to cover break even? Why should a customer return? I suppose it could be interesting to watch the AI adjust from it's original stock to something that will generate sales and profit in this specific location.
- codeugo 6mo agoDoes the AI also watch my shift through the camera and provide feedback everyday like a real manager?
- thih9 6mo ago> Great question! Here’s the short version: > Fair pushback. The honest answer: These were painful to read. If an artificial boss is also artificially empathetic, does this make it more realistic? In any case current iteration sounds like a more exclusive circle of hell.
- silverpiranha 6mo agocan we stop gendering AI's please? Calling it "she" is so anthropomorphic and unnecessary. I'm willing to discuss the argument for giving these machines a human-like persona, but I think it's misleading to general audiences.
- leonidasrup 6mo agoThis AI has a good taste for books. From the AI proposed books I highly recommend "Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes, published in 1986. It's a history book but reads much like a novel.
- cvander 6mo agoThanks for building in public Lukas.
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- deadbabe 6mo agoSo the future is basically people asking (praying) to AI to make them money.
- saaaaaam 6mo agoDid Luna the AI write this piece of promotional marketing and decide to post it on hacker news? Did Luna the AI create a fleet of new accounts to upvote? Are the human-derived marketing interventions accounted for when the outcomes of this project are assessed?
- kypro 6mo agoWhile reading this I couldn't help but think this is the kinda dumb socially out-of-touch type of thing I might have done when I was younger... This is real money and real people's lives... I get some companies/people will do these types of experiments from time to time to test AI capability, but these guys seem to have done it simply for the fun of it and to get clicks. If you genuinely don't want this to be the future, then perhaps you shouldn't make it the present? Either this is low IQ or bad faith, and I'd bet on it being the latter. As someone who likes to prep for interviews and get quite emotionally worked up ahead of them, I think if I had joined an interview and it was an AI interviewing me I would feel very hurt... Even if I was given the job by the AI I'd probably also decline it because I assume if I'm interviewing I'd be looking for a real job and not to be paid to par-take in some AI experiment... But the humiliation doesn't end there because these guys are going to show the world just how witty their AI was in its replies after making interviewees feel so uncomfortable that they decided to decline their stupid roles. Crazy stuff guys. I had to double check if this was satire or not before commenting because it's the kinda thing that only a silicon valley company backed by YC would do.
- dekoidal 6mo agoSo are we still going to be free to be creative while AI does the menial jobs?
- mring33621 6mo agoI'd rather work for an AI than some of the managers I've had in the past.
- avidphantasm 6mo agoI would be very surprised if they can scale hiring contractors to reliably renovate buildings.
- Stevvo 6mo agoThe only mention of profit is in the the headline; the article doesn't indicate that the AI managed to make one. Surely if it did, the article would boast of it, so one can only assume that an AI cannot run a profitable store in San Francisco.
- phyzix5761 6mo agoI think the main advantage AI (and machines in general) have over humans is they don't have the emotional barriers and attachment to outcomes and ideas. If a human fails or things don't go their way they may be held back emotionally from trying again for some time before, eventually, hitting on the right idea which helps them succeed. Humans also get emotionally exhausted when confronted with a large number of tasks and human interactions. AI has no such hangups and therefore can quickly iterate and do what needs to be done to run a business and, potentially, succeed.
- gizajob 6mo agoI feel like the profit part is going to be a struggle.
- franga2000 6mo agoI spent more than half the length of the article wondering a very simple question: what does the store actually sell? Even after reading the answer, I'm not entirely sure. A handful of specific books, "artisan" snacks and...candles? All in this stupid minimalist hipster high-concept style and almost certainly at an unreasonably high markup. Completely soul-less, but with a "deep" backstory written by an even more soul-less marketing drone (literally this time!). To put it differently, it's an over-hyped questionably-profitable "business" selling things nobody needs to people who can't see through the marketing copy because "it's the next big thing, everyone else has it". An honestly excellent metaphor for the entire AI industry!