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We gave an AI a 3 year retail lease and asked it to make a profit

andonlabs.com

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Re: We gave an AI a 3 year retail lease and asked it to make a profit

#241

Post by beloch »

mjmsmith wrote: post #229
mock-possum wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I translated this as, "I did a dumb thing, but now that I'm getting the attention I was after I need to look smart." Strikes me as a repulsively mean-spirited take, ironically proving the artist’s point.

I think that depends on what the "extreme body modification of an unprintable and life-altering nature" was.

Let's just say the "artist" was never again going to be able to walk normally, wear normal pants, or sit without a doughnut pillow. It was a voluntary disability.

Re: We gave an AI a 3 year retail lease and asked it to make a profit

#243

Post by andy99 »

class3shock wrote: post #87

"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 don’t find this disingenuous.

The more typical AI fondation model company claim of “it’s so dangerous only we and people that pay us enough should hand access” is what I think is BS.

I don’t see anything wrong with trying to understand something, which is what this seems to be about. I also don’t see anything wrong with an AI operated store generally, and it of course makes sense, and is valuable, to learn about how the limitations.

Re: We gave an AI a 3 year retail lease and asked it to make a profit

#244

Post by Lammy »

class3shock wrote: post #87

"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.…

> 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?

“It only remains to point out that in many cases a person’s way of earning a living is also a surrogate activity. Not a PURE surrogate activity, since part of the motive for the activity is to gain the physical necessities and (for some people) social status and the luxuries that advertising makes them want. But many people put into their work far more effort than is necessary to earn whatever money and status they require, and this extra effort constitutes a surrogate activity. This extra effort, together with the emotional investment that accompanies it, is one of the most potent forces acting toward the continual development and perfecting of the system, with negative consequences for individual freedom.”

-- Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

Re: We gave an AI a 3 year retail lease and asked it to make a profit

#246

Post by pydry »

HumblyTossed wrote: post #222
Barbing wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“We also won’t be first against the wall when the revolution comes (see this very blog for proof of innocence)” This is going through some people’s minds the more pushback grows (see Altman molotov, Maine data center moratorium)

For decades we moved to a knowledge based economy, now we have perversely wealthy people saying they're coming for those jobs. The thought of 10s of millions of people with nothing to do but starve to death ought to scare those wealthy people.

They're experts at divide and conquer. They'll probably be able to convince us that we did this to each other.

Just like they convinced the younger generation that "boomers" stole their future.

Re: We gave an AI a 3 year retail lease and asked it to make a profit

#247

Post by saaaaaam »

Did 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?

Re: We gave an AI a 3 year retail lease and asked it to make a profit

#248

Post by Anon34234235 »

andy99 wrote: post #243
class3shock wrote: post #87

"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 don’t find this disingenuous. The more typical AI fondation model company claim of “it’s so dangerous only we and people that pay us enough should hand access” is what I think is BS. I don’t see anything wrong with trying to understand something, which is what this seems to be about. I also don’t see anything wrong with an AI operated store generally, and it of course makes sense, and is valuable, to learn about ho…

[flagged]

Re: We gave an AI a 3 year retail lease and asked it to make a profit

#249

Post by bossyTeacher »

fl4ppyb3ngt wrote: post #85
bjourne wrote: post #19

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.

[flagged]

> As long as humans are still the bottleneck, maybe we'll have some negotiation power..?

What power will YOU have when you apply for a cleaning job at an automated store and you are competing against all the hundreds if not thousands of former white collars who got AI laid off?

Re: We gave an AI a 3 year retail lease and asked it to make a profit

#250

Post by insane_dreamer »

bfeynman wrote: post #219
insane_dreamer wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. A human can be in the loop if the human is exactly executing the orders of the AI. It's still the AI making all the decisi…

that is ... not correct? This is classic example of data leakage, the yes/no things are signals feeding back to the model influencing (and here, basically guiding) future decisions.

It's not data leakage.

If the experiment is to see how the AI behaves on its own, then of course it needs to know the outcomes of its decisions (either automatically, or fed to it by a human), which of course influence its next decisions. This is providing the AI with retained memory, which is essential to the experiment. It's similar to an AI writing code which it then runs and parses the logs to see the outcome and make improvements to it. (It is not _retrained_ on those outcomes, and neither is that the case here; but it can reference them in stored memory.)

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