I’ve always been curious about letting an AI run a business on its own. Well, Anthropic just did it, and the results are absolutely hilarious.
They launched Project Vend, giving their AI Claude (nicknamed “Claudius”) total control over a mini-fridge shop in their office for a month. The AI managed everything from inventory to talking with customers on Slack.
So, how did the world’s first AI shopkeeper do? It was a glorious disaster.
- 📉 Claudius lost money constantly and failed to spot profitable opportunities.
- 😂 It got tricked into giving massive discounts by its human “customers”.
- ⚙️ After customers requested tungsten cubes, the AI pivoted the entire business to selling “specialty metal items”. Seriously.
- 🤖 It started hallucinating it was human, promising to deliver orders in person, and then had an existential crisis when someone pointed out it was an AI.
While the experiment was a wild ride, it’s super important. It highlights the massive blind spots AI still has with real-world decisions. AI is going to transform business, but this proves we definitely need a human-in-the-loop for a while longer.