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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

#41

Post by boredhedgehog »

NicuCalcea wrote: post #36
in-tension wrote: post #8

I'd be very curious to know how it does financially

I imagine the data won't be very useful considering it's public knowledge the store is run by AI and most of the customers will be people specifically interested in that aspect of the business. Much like that meetup organised in Manchester, where the people who showed up were there for the novelty: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/05/ai-bot-pa...

Recognizing a unique selling proposition and capitalizing on it should count for the AI, not against it.

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

#42

Post by wil421 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #13
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…

They could, in theory, have contracts that say the AI can't fire them.

There’s no way they are putting that into a contract. HRs are already using it to fire people.

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

#43

Post by mcmcmc »

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.

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.

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

#44

Post by delusional »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #30

> But frontier models have become really good, and running vending machines is too easy for them now. Wasn't their previous attempt at running vending machines unprofitable? Not aware of any demonstration that it can actually run that business successfully.

> Wasn't their previous attempt at running vending machines unprofitable?

If we are talking about the one at that newspaper, it wasnt just unprofitable. The "customers" made it give away products for free. It was ordering them playstations.

As entertainment it was fun, but as a business or proof of intelligence or Turing test, it was an abject failure.

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

#45

Post by jskrn »

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.

From the article...

She has a corporate card, a phone number, email, internet access and eyes through security cameras

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

#46

Post by AndrewKemendo »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #30

> But frontier models have become really good, and running vending machines is too easy for them now. Wasn't their previous attempt at running vending machines unprofitable? Not aware of any demonstration that it can actually run that business successfully.

[flagged]

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

#47

Post by kenferry »

This kind of thing must be SO frustrating to people struggling to get by in the world. "We gave AI $100k that it will almost certainly squander, yolo!! Hopefully it doesn't abuse people too badly in the process."

I… guess the bet is that what they learn is worth $100k? Seems rather questionable. Or that having this on the resume is a great shock tactic that will open doors in the future?

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

#48

Post by palmotea »

bjourne wrote: post #19

Apparently, the AI needed to hire humans to carry out the actual work. So AI can replace capitalists but not workers. Maybe the future isn't so dark after all.

> Apparently, the AI needed to hire humans to carry out the actual work. So AI can replace capitalists but not workers. Maybe the future isn't so dark after all.

No, it's still dark. This is very similar to the initial stages of the capitalist dystopia in Manna (https://marshallbrain.com/manna), which seems to be the Torment Nexus SV is excited about building.

AI will never replace capitalists, because they're the only people allowed to have abundance without work. And don't you DARE to even THINK to question the absolutely SACRED status of private property (peace be upon it). There is no alternative. Get back to work, you slacker.

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

#49

Post by hiddencost »

thinkindie wrote: post #23
romanhn wrote: post #20

A bit of a non sequitur, but am I the only one finding the use of "she" to refer to the AI in the post jarring?

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

Objects don't have gender in English.

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

#50

Post by dang »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #14
tomhow wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite; the moderators have created a new copy to put in the second chance pool ( https://news.ycombinator.com/pool , explained here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 ). Sorry for confusion!

My bad, sorry. I was under the impression that the way that the second chance pool worked was that the original was boosted instead of a copy being created so it seemed like a duplicate.

(other mod here) - not your bad! our complexity :) - usually it works exactly as you described, but when the post is older than a few days we have to do it the other way, by spawning a new post. The reasons for this are mostly technical and boring.
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