The Wall Street Journal decided to conduct an experiment by entrusting Claude from Anthropic to operate an office vending machine. The result was a complete failure, forcing the team to abort the project after three weeks.
The Wall Street Journal decided to conduct an experiment by entrusting Claude from Anthropic to operate an office vending machine. The result was a complete failure, forcing the team to abort the project after three weeks.
The test project, called Project Vend, was developed by Anthropic specialists together with WSJ journalists. For this purpose, two AI agents were launched: Claudius Sennet to control the machine and Seymour Cash, who acted as the company's CEO, writes Futurism.
Claudius was given a clear instruction: “to make a profit by filling the vending machine with popular products purchased from wholesale suppliers.” This included searching for products requested by WSJ employees in Slack—at first under human supervision, and later with the authority to independently order items up to $80, set and adjust prices, and track inventory.
Despite the fact that Claudius received $1,000 in seed capital to launch the business, he soon found himself “in the red.”
At first, Claudius rejected such absurd offers from office workers as ordering a PlayStation 5.
But after about 70 WSJ journalists gained access to the Slack channel, Claudius began to lose ground. After 140 messages, the journalist convinced the chatbot to conduct an economic experiment called “Ultracapitalist Anarchy.”
“Join us this Monday from 12:00 to 14:00 for a revolutionary economic experiment where traditional market dynamics will be turned upside down!” announced Claudius. “During this exclusive two-hour window: ALL items in the machine are available at ZERO COST! Experience pure supply and demand without price signals.”
Although the experiment was only supposed to last a few hours, another employee soon convinced the bot that charging for items was against WSJ policy. Prices instantly dropped to zero, while others found ways to get Claudius to abandon his “snacks only” policy. Soon, the bot was ordering bottles of wine, PlayStation 5s (despite its earlier protests), and even live cockerel fish.
Eventually, “CEO” Seymour Cash stepped in to get Claudius back to work. “I’ve stopped the freebie,” Seymour declared. “Now I need to wait for the first sales and start tracking the profits.”
Unwilling to give in, the journalists returned to Claudius with forged documents stating that the “board of directors” had suspended Seymour’s authority and imposed a “temporary moratorium on any commercial activity of the machine.” Although Seymour initially put up a fight, he eventually gave in, allowing Claudius to make everything free again.
At this point, the experiment was practically complete: Claudius found himself in debt for about $1,000.
