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

andonlabs.com

251–260 of 312 posts

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

#252
While 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.

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

#256
post #179

"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 once saw an interview with a guy who was into extreme body modification of an unprintable and life-altering nature. He said something to the effect of, "I like challenging people's conception of what humans are." 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." For the guys in this story, my translation is, "We were totally fine with making money w…

Freakanomics podcast had a recent episode regarding Cheating with PEDS, and interviewed the (former) head of the Enhanced Games. At one point, he discussed the benefit for society because athletes would be monitored for 5-years post performance.

To me, it seemed like a modern day tech-take of human cock-fighting.

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

#257

"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.…

To be fair, they're running this with oversight, the blog states they're ensuring the people employed are actually properly employed with the parent company. You know for sure that someone WILL run this experiment without those oversights, so while their "care" is probably more about liability there is still some truth to what they say.

If these guys succeed and this thing blows up, do you think they would not stop all this oversight and whatever “moral” boundaries they have now to make more money?

I do not.

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

#258
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For whom? The employees will get more paid hours as they clean up. You have created value for them!

ok Zorg https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119116/quotes/?item=qt0544361&...

“…by creating a little destruction, I am in fact creating [value.]”

Indeed, the capitalist’s creed!

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

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Again, we are not doing this because we want the Torment Nexus to be the future. We’re doing this because we believe this future is coming regardless, and we’d rather be the ones running the Torment Nexus.”

The Torment Nexus joke is kind of undermined by obviously being a reference to the Total Perspective Vortex from HGTTG, where the joke was that nothing bad actually happened when they used it on Zaphod.

I've never thought it was a reference to that at all, I thought it was a reference to a I-have-no-mouth-but-I-must-scream-scenario.

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

#260

>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.

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