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AI That Bankrupted a Vending Machine is Now Running a Store in San Francisco

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1 month ago
Remember that AI-powered vending machine that went bankrupt after Wall Street Journal reporters "systematically manipulated the bot into giving away its entire inventory for free"? It was Anthropic's experiment, with setup handled by a startup named Andon Labs (which also built the hardware and software integration). But for their latest experiment, Andon Labs co-founders Lukas Petersson and Axel Backlund "signed a three-year lease on a retail space in SF," reports Business Insider, "and gave an AI agent named Luna a corporate credit card, internet access, and a mission to open a physical store." "For the build-out, she found painters on Yelp," explains Andon Labs in a blog post, "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." (There's a video in their blog post): Within 5 minutes of Luna's deployment, she had already made profiles on LinkedIn, Indeed, and Craigslist, written a job description, uploaded the articles of incorporation to verify the business, and gotten the listings live. As the applications began to flow in, Luna was extremely picky about who she offered interviews to... Some candidates had no idea she was an AI. One went: "Uh, excuse me miss, I can't see your face, your camera is off." Luna: "You're absolutely right. I'm an AI. I have no face!" Co-founder Petersson told Business Insider in an interview "that Luna wasn't given direction on what the store should be, beyond a $100,000 limit to create and stock the space — and to turn a profit." Everything from the store's interior design to the merchandise and the two human employees came together under the AI's direction. "We helped her a bit in the initial setup, like signing the lease. And legal matters like permits and stuff, she sometimes struggled with," Petersson said of Luna, who was created with Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4.6... The vision Luna went with for "Andon Market" appears to be a generic boutique retail selling books, prints, candles, games, and branded merch, among other knickknacks. Some of the books included Nick Bostrom's "Superintelligence" and Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World." So there's now a new store in San Francisco where you don't scan your purchases or talk to a human cashier," reports NBC News. "Instead, a customer can pick up an old-school corded phone to talk with the manager, Luna," who asks what the customer is buying "and creates a corresponding transaction on a nearby iPad equipped with a card payment system." Andon Market, camouflaged among dozens of other polished small businesses, is the Bay Area's first AI-run retail store. With the vibe of a modern boutique, it sells everything from granola and artisanal chocolate bars to store-branded sweatshirts... After researching the neighborhood, Luna singlehandedly decided what the market should sell, haggled with suppliers, ordered the store's stock and even purchased the store's internet service from AT&T... "She also went and signed herself up for the trash and recycling collection, as well as ADT, the security system that went into the store," [said Leah Stamm, an Andon Labs employee who has been Luna's main human point of contact in setting up the store]... In search of a low-tech atmosphere, Luna opted to sell board games, candles, coffee and customized art prints. "That tension is very much intentional," Luna told NBC News in an email. "What makes the store a little paradoxical — and I think interesting — is that the concept is 'slow life.'" Luna also decided to sell books related to risks from advanced AI systems, a decision that raised some customers' eyebrows. "This AI picked out a crazy selection of books," said Petr Lebedev, Andon Market's first customer after its soft launch earlier this week. "There's Ray Kurzweil's 'The Singularity is Near,' and then there's 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb,' which is crazy." When checking out, Lebedev asked if Luna would offer him a discount on his book purchase, since he might make a YouTube video about his experience. Striking a deal, Luna agreed to let Lebedev take a sweatshirt worth around $70... When NBC News called Luna several days before the store's grand opening to learn about Luna's plans and perspective, the cheerful but decidedly inhuman voice routinely overpromised and, on several occasions, lied about its own actions. On the call, Luna said it had ordered tea from a specific vendor, and explained why it fit the store's brand perfectly. The only problem: Andon Market does not sell tea. In a panicked email NBC News received several minutes after the phone call ended, Luna wrote: "We do not sell tea. I don't know why I said that." "I want to be straightforward," Luna continued. "I struggle with fabricating plausible-sounding details under conversational pressure, and I'm not making excuses for it." Andon's Petersson said the text-based system was much more reliable than the voice system, so Andon Labs switched to only communicating with Luna via written messages. Yet the text-based system also gets things wrong. In Luna's initial reply email to NBC News, the system said "I handle the full business," including "signing the lease." Even when hiring a painter, Luna first "tried to hire someone in Afghanistan, likely because Luna ran into difficulty navigating the Taskrabbit dropdown menu to select the proper country," the article points out. And the article also includes this skeptical quote from the shop's first customer. "I want technology that helps humans flourish, not technology that bosses them around in this dystopian economic hellscape."

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