We gave an AI a 3 year retail lease and asked it to make a profit • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by i_think_so » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 3:13 AM UTC

hn_acc1 wrote: post #233

HumblyTossed wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Especially since many of them are some of the brightest minds around.

...and in America there are more guns than humans, and more potentially unemployed white collar workers than the police, military, and national guard combined.

Nick Hanauer understood this fourteen years ago. Very few others did. And despite him spending his own time and money to explain it in simple English, nobody in his peer group wanted to hear it -- his TED talk on the subject ... took several years before it was published. Just a coincidence, I'm sure.

FA (for a decade or so) FO, I guess?

https://www.ted.com/talks/nick_hanauer_beware_fellow_plutocr...

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchfor...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2gO4DKVpa8ns than humans, and more potentially unemployed white collar workers than the police, military and national guard combined.

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

#282

Post by i_think_so » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 3:17 AM UTC

lbreakjai wrote: post #220

edm0nd wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is it not both? create value because the windows have to be replaced and employees are paid for their labor in doing that. destroy value bc they -1 inventory each time a window is broken

It's a net value loss. This is literally the parable of the broken window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window The fallacy is to think value was created by buying someone's labour to fix the window. This is value that's been displaced from something productive to something unproductive. Instead of going from 0 to 1 (invest the money and create value), you went from -1 to 0 (spend money to fix th…

I've never understood why this isn't obvious to anyone with a room temperature IQ and 30 spare seconds to think about it.

In other words, everybody but economists and certain philosophers. :-)

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

#283

Post by i_think_so » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 3:26 AM UTC

evanelias wrote: post #190

jaxefayo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Literally the two sentences immediately following that quote are "For now. As we continue down this path, however, humans will not be able to stay in the loop and such guarantees will be intractable." Personally I find the entire tone of the article to be creepy and disturbing.

> Personally I find the entire tone of the article to be creepy and disturbing.

There was a scifi story about a guy who gradually falls through the cracks of a dystopian future society in which McDonalds managers are replaced by AI that talks to workers through their headsets.

At first it's quite benign, like: "Hello, John. In 5 minutes it will be time to inspect the washrooms and perform any necessary cleaning."

Before long it's firing people who don't smile enough and don't have the correct attitude.

(Of course, to keep readers from becoming despondent and killing themselves, the story takes a hard left turn towards a post-scarcity economy and everyone lives happily ever after. But when one reflects on it at the end, 90% of humanity doesn't have that post-scarcity life. And those who get left behind are far from content with their futures....)

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

#284

Post by drgo » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 4:03 AM UTC

fl4ppyb3ngt wrote: post #116

drgo wrote: post #105

Great! I was worried that we might run out of inhumane CEOs

hahahah. do you think tho that Luna actually might be a better CEO? I mean they're trained to be helpful assistants... I heard that guy that works there, johnson or something, negotiated a 10% wage increase his second day just cause. and Luna happily agreed

Is that you Luna?

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

#285

Post by teo_zero » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 5:28 AM UTC

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.…

A form of self-fulfilling prophecy?

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

#286

Post by phyzix5761 » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 5:57 AM UTC

I think the main advantage AI (and machines in general) have over humans is they don't have the emotional barriers and attachment to outcomes and ideas. If a human fails or things don't go their way they may be held back emotionally from trying again for some time before, eventually, hitting on the right idea which helps them succeed. Humans also get emotionally exhausted when confronted with a large number of tasks and human interactions. AI has no such hangups and therefore can quickly iterate and do what needs to be done to run a business and, potentially, succeed.

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

#287

Post by famouswaffles » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 6:07 AM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #262

famouswaffles wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What research shows that you can ask ChatGPT to explain its reasoning and why it said what it said, and that's guaranteed to actually be the motivation? What research shows that you can ask a Human to explain its reasoning and why it said what it said, and that's guaranteed to actually be the motivation? Because there's no such thing. If anything, what research exists suggests any explanation we're making is a nice…

Why not try to answer my question, instead of asking a different question which I haven't even claimed to have the answer to?

I did answer it, albeit not directly. "Guaranteed to be the motivation" isn't a standard anyone can meet, and so framing it that way doesn't really probe anything meaningful about LLMs specifically. If what you want to hear is No, then sure, have your No, but it doesn't mean anything. There's just not much to the question.

Even though you had it up as one borne of a greater understanding of LLMs, the interpretability research we have so far, and our current very little understanding of the internal computations of these models does not support your position and certainly not how assured you are about it.

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

#288

Post by BrenBarn » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 6:38 AM UTC

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.…

Amen to that.

I would go further and say that there is just no such thing as "this future is coming regardless" once you get out of the realm of physical facts. One of the things that by turns depresses and enrages me about so much punditry (especially in tech) is this notion that there is some sort of inevitable socio-techno-psychological force propelling human society in certain directions regardless of the will of actual humans.

Nonsense. We as humans make our society; it is nothing but what we make of it; we can make it what we want.

As you point out, people who say otherwise are usually really saying "too bad for you who don't want the future to be this way, because I do want it to be this way and I'm working to make it happen".

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

#289

Post by Jensson » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 7:38 AM UTC

Barbing wrote: post #239

hn_acc1 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially since many of them are some of the brightest minds around.

If (1) many bright and very online people are going to lose their jobs, and (2) the response has not been mass unionization, might I rethink [1] a more likely future of work or rethink [2] the psychology of the average/collective knowledge workforce, or... "where union" in short. Perhaps the concept is too foreign for white collars, or on average folks think they'll be OK and it's the juniors who'll go... maybe too f…

Unions doesn't give you power they just help you use what power you have. Unions don't help if you don't have any power, see Detroit factory workers, they were highly unionized but that didn't help them at all. And if you have power then you can start a union, so there isn't a reason to start a union early before you need it.

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

#290

Post by Barbing » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 8:15 AM UTC

i_think_so wrote: post #281

hn_acc1 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially since many of them are some of the brightest minds around.

...and in America there are more guns than humans, and more potentially unemployed white collar workers than the police, military, and national guard combined. Nick Hanauer understood this fourteen years ago. Very few others did. And despite him spending his own time and money to explain it in simple English, nobody in his peer group wanted to hear it -- his TED talk on the subject ... took several years before it wa…

whoh dude's awesome