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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

#121

Post by hamdingers »

jaxefayo wrote: post #51
pavel_lishin wrote: post #10

> John and Jill are not at risk. This is a controlled experiment and everyone working at Andon Market is formally employed by Andon Labs, with guaranteed pay, fair wages, and full legal protections. No one’s livelihood depends on an AI’s judgment alone. I'm not sure what sort of labor regulations exist in San Francisco, but presumably they can be fired as easily by an AI as a real person, right? If Luna decides to fi…

The article mentions: “John and Jill are not at risk. This is a controlled experiment and everyone working at Andon Market is formally employed by Andon Labs, with guaranteed pay, fair wages, and full legal protections. No one’s livelihood depends on an AI’s judgment alone.” which was refreshing to read.

I take that to mean "we won't let the AI refuse to pay them or otherwise break employment law" not that they could never be fired.

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

#122

Post by SoftTalker »

hiddencost wrote: post #49
thinkindie wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure in English, but in Italian, for example, Intelligenza is feminine.

Objects don't have gender in English.

Some do, by tradition more than language rules. Ships are "she" and some people refer to their cars as "she."

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

#123

Post by anon84873628 »

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.…

Not for the economic opportunity of building AI-run retail stores. For the much larger economic opportunity of selling AI's to run retail stores!

Pickaxes and shovels and whatnot.

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

#125

Post by why_at »

mlmonkey wrote: post #16

I'd be more interested in the details: what are the inputs given to the model? Does it get a live video feed? Does it know if/when employees show up and open the store? Does it get sales figures? Info on the individuals who bought things? Storekeeping is more than just ordering merch and putting it up on hangars.

Yeah there's a lot of details which I'm guessing are actually being handled by humans either for legal reasons or practical ones.

Like OK, it's hiring people to run the place, but how are they getting the keys to the store? Someone needs to physically let them in.

What if the police get called because of shoplifting or if someone gets hurt in the store or something?

Who is filing the taxes for the business? They're probably not letting the AI handle that one. Move fast and break things is not a good idea when dealing with the IRS

A lot of this seems to depend on hiring good employees who can basically run the business themselves. Kind of like when a human owns a store I guess.

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

#126

Post by Waterluvian »

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 think it’s easier just to recognize words as free and to value them as such. Actions have value.

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

#127

Post by sdenton4 »

fl4ppyb3ngt wrote: post #108
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.…

[flagged]

It's the next step removed from the tablet based ordering that has taken over in restaurants. Like those tablets, it won't be everywhere, but its easy to imagine it being ubiquitous, especially in chain stores.

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

#128

Post by anon84873628 »

sbuttgereit wrote: post #68

I skimmed through this, and maybe I missed it... but what really are they trying to prove? Are they trying to show that AI is capable of arbitraging consumer desires vs. market products/services into a successful business? Are they trying to show that once you get to financially managing a business that the ruthlessly efficient demands of the AI can mean points to your margins? Or are they simply trying to get attent…

If I'm being charitable, it's more about the ability to orchestrate and resolve tradeoffs across these different tasks / domains? The overall C&C, presumably. Which is still not so surprising.

Really it's an excuse for the company to test all the harnesses and tools they have built to make it work.

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

#129

Post by fl4ppyb3ngt »

ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #59

To do this properly, no one should know the store is AI run. There is a novelty component of it being an AI run store that will drive consumer demand and increase publicity. Not even the normal store employees should know (which would be difficult) or maybe the human manager should be held to an NDA to not disclose it (and the manager also defers to the AI in all such real management decisions).

ya i get that, but then that kinda messes up the transparency and ethical research part of the experiment. idk there's definitely two sides of things they're testing: 1. can it be profitable-- in this case yeah they shouldn't have disclosed anything. 2. can an AI do this safely and respectfully, or are the humans in the loop going to come at the cost of the agent trying to make profit. I think #2 is more important than 1

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

#130

Post by mcmcmc »

pythonaut_16 wrote: post #118
mcmcmc wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered reading TFA? Literally the second paragraph: > She has a corporate card, a phone number, email, internet access and eyes through security cameras.

That basically means nothing. The article is very light on details. Go into Claude right now. What does it have? Internet access after you prompt it. Ok now pull out your phone, a credit card, a security camera. You can say "Claude these are yours, run a business", but nothing's going to happen until you build an actual harness. Like the idea presented by the article is interesting, but it's basically just a fluff pi…

You’re not wrong, but the commenter I responded to clearly hadn’t bothered to read it at all since they were asking questions that are answered in the piece. And when that’s the case it’s hard to believe they would actually be interested in details even if they were available.
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