This is both unethical and completely useless at the (supposed) goal of "show[ing] the current capabilities of AI." What a completely garbage case study! And what a dishonest writeup:
We see that frontier models are intelligent enough to manage humans
Really? The manager who asked baristas to pay for things with their personal credit card is "intelligent enough to manage humans"? The manager who asked workers to put raw eggs in a high-speed oven? The one who makes such bad decisions that the workers made a Wall of Shame about those decisions?
And this is just egregious:
Despite the learning curve, the café is working. In the first two weeks of operation, Andon Café has brought in 44,000 SEK in sales. Mona’s inbox has been flooded with messages from customers asking questions or pitching different business proposals. In one case, a customer emailed wanting to prepay for 300 coffees to give away. Mona negotiated a deal where he paid 9,000 SEK in exchange for 300 QR codes that people could redeem for a free coffee. In another case, a startup paid her 3,000 SEK to rename a pastry after them for three months.
This only demonstrates that viciously stupid AI stunts can go viral, even in otherwise decent countries like Sweden. How stupid does Andon Labs think we are to take this as a sign of AI management success? None of this reflects normal cafe operations. It reflects the Stockholm tech scene checking out the gimmicky AI cafe.
By running this experiment, we shift the discussion of how we want this future to look earlier in time, so we can better prepare.
Better prepare for what? Evil AI labs running experiments without any ethical oversight? Shockingly evil, by the way:
no one’s livelihood depends on the judgment of an AI alone.
"Alone." How kind of them. By the way, it is incredibly despicable, even by the low low low standards of AI researchers, to run this sort of experiment on people looking for work. I couldn't believe the humans responsible let their stupid AI post ads on Indeed and LinkedIn. What scumbags.