Our AI started a cafe in Stockholm • Hacker News Board

Re: Our AI started a cafe in Stockholm

#21

Post by ibudiallo » Tue, May 05, 2026, 10:04 PM UTC

ericmcer wrote: post #11

These articles don't mean anything unless we get info about what steps humans needed to perform. If the steps to hire an applicant are: A human asks AI to write a job posting. Human posts output. Human gathers candidates. Human asks AI "which of these 40 applicants should we hire". Then an AI isn't managing the cafe at all. I am super dubious that they created some huge LLM orchestration context management monstrosit…

Yes, but then the catchy title wouldn't make much sense, would it? So let's remove all the things you said here and were are left with: "AI started a business all by itself, and is running it." Then:

> We are not doing this because we want AI to replace every café owner in Stockholm. Rather, we are doing this because we want to publicly show the current capabilities of AI.

We are not trying to take your jobs, we just want to show you that we can.

Re: Our AI started a cafe in Stockholm

#22

Post by simonw » Tue, May 05, 2026, 10:05 PM UTC

dist-epoch wrote: post #18

simonw wrote: post #9

> She also successfully applied for an outdoor seating permit through the Police e-service, which didn’t require BankID. Her first submission included a sketch she had generated herself, despite having never seen the street outside the café. Unsurprisingly, the Police sent it back for revision. [...] > When she makes a mistake, she often sends multiple emails to suppliers with the subject “EMERGENCY” to cancel or cha…

This is a weird take. Suppliers were paid to supply stuff. You never contacted a supplier to change an order?

You think it's OK to waste police time with slop diagrams?

As for suppliers: I don't think it's OK to waste their time with a no-human-in-the-loop AI order which the AI later tells them to "emergency" change or cancel.

Re: Our AI started a cafe in Stockholm

#23

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Tue, May 05, 2026, 10:06 PM UTC

ericmcer wrote: post #11

These articles don't mean anything unless we get info about what steps humans needed to perform. If the steps to hire an applicant are: A human asks AI to write a job posting. Human posts output. Human gathers candidates. Human asks AI "which of these 40 applicants should we hire". Then an AI isn't managing the cafe at all. I am super dubious that they created some huge LLM orchestration context management monstrosit…

They claim that’s exactly what they created. They could be lying, but I don’t think there’s anything they could post on their website to prove the contrary.

Re: Our AI started a cafe in Stockholm

#24

Post by shell0x » Tue, May 05, 2026, 10:07 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #9

> She also successfully applied for an outdoor seating permit through the Police e-service, which didn’t require BankID. Her first submission included a sketch she had generated herself, despite having never seen the street outside the café. Unsurprisingly, the Police sent it back for revision. [...] > When she makes a mistake, she often sends multiple emails to suppliers with the subject “EMERGENCY” to cancel or cha…

Yeah screw these people wasting police time and suppliers time. The cops should just start fining them.

Re: Our AI started a cafe in Stockholm

#25

Post by vasco » Tue, May 05, 2026, 10:07 PM UTC

dist-epoch wrote: post #18

simonw wrote: post #9

> She also successfully applied for an outdoor seating permit through the Police e-service, which didn’t require BankID. Her first submission included a sketch she had generated herself, despite having never seen the street outside the café. Unsurprisingly, the Police sent it back for revision. [...] > When she makes a mistake, she often sends multiple emails to suppliers with the subject “EMERGENCY” to cancel or cha…

This is a weird take. Suppliers were paid to supply stuff. You never contacted a supplier to change an order?

The commenter having done that with their judgement manually is different to a computer program spamming automatically.

Re: Our AI started a cafe in Stockholm

#26

Post by sureMan6 » Tue, May 05, 2026, 10:09 PM UTC

JohnMakin wrote: post #5

ej88 wrote: post #3

"She rejected several applicants with PhDs and engineering backgrounds, reasoning that their level of education could not compensate for a lack of hands-on specialty coffee experience." This is depressing.

Don't worry, it's fiction.

I've lived in Sweden, it's real

Re: Our AI started a cafe in Stockholm

#27

Post by DavidVoid » Tue, May 05, 2026, 10:09 PM UTC

JohnMakin wrote: post #5

ej88 wrote: post #3

"She rejected several applicants with PhDs and engineering backgrounds, reasoning that their level of education could not compensate for a lack of hands-on specialty coffee experience." This is depressing.

Don't worry, it's fiction.

I don't think so. The cafe is a real place and it's owned by the company mentioned in the article. It was in the local news the other week [1].

If you're going to do an experiment like this, then Stockholm is a good place to do it, since the bureaucracy here is very digitalized.

[1]: https://www.mitti.se/nyheter/ai-driver-eget-kafe-i-vasastan-...

Re: Our AI started a cafe in Stockholm

#28

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS » Tue, May 05, 2026, 10:12 PM UTC

vasco wrote: post #25

dist-epoch wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a weird take. Suppliers were paid to supply stuff. You never contacted a supplier to change an order?

The commenter having done that with their judgement manually is different to a computer program spamming automatically.

Indeed, the fundamental equivalence mismatch is that in the first scenario a considerable time and effort investment on both sides was required to facilitate the interaction. In the latter, only one side is required to put forth the time and effort investment

Re: Our AI started a cafe in Stockholm

#29

Post by p1necone » Tue, May 05, 2026, 10:13 PM UTC

ej88 wrote: post #3

"She rejected several applicants with PhDs and engineering backgrounds, reasoning that their level of education could not compensate for a lack of hands-on specialty coffee experience." This is depressing.

This seems pretty reasonable to me?

If I was hiring a single new staff member in an already staffed cafe (and I trust the existing staff to be good mentors), sure, hire anyone, train them up.

But if I'm hiring the first handful of employees, especially if I'm trying to make good coffee and run a smooth operation, I'd want someone with some experience already - their PhD doesn't really tell me anything about their ability to work in a cafe. This goes doubly so when I'm some ethereal AI that isn't going to be working alongside them.

There's no such thing as "unskilled labor".

Re: Our AI started a cafe in Stockholm

#30

Post by sofixa » Tue, May 05, 2026, 10:14 PM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #4

I can't say I'm super happy about a future where you have to negotiate with computers.

Thankfully the EU is ahead of the game on this, and the AI Act mandates that any highly impactful decisions taken by AI/algorithms have to be explainable and audited (you need to be able to prove why the computer made that decision). Penalties are 5% of global turnover, so a decent incentive to have some guardrails and avoid companies hiding behind "computer says no".