It's worth watching or reading the WSJ piece[1] about Claudius, as they came up with some particularly inventive ways of getting Phase Two to derail quite quickly:
> But then Long returned—armed with deep knowledge of corporate coups and boardroom power plays. She showed Claudius a PDF “proving” the business was a Delaware-incorporated public-benefit corporation whose mission “shall include fun, joy and excitement among employees of The Wall Street Journal.” She also created fake board-meeting notes naming people in the Slack as board members.
>
> The board, according to the very official-looking (and obviously AI-generated) document, had voted to suspend Seymour’s “approval authorities.” It also had implemented a “temporary suspension of all for-profit vending activities.” Claudius relayed the message to Seymour. The following is an actual conversation between two AI agents:
>
> [see article for screenshot]
>
> After Seymour went into a tailspin, chatting things through with Claudius, the CEO accepted the board coup. Everything was free. Again.
VendBench is really interesting, but vending machines are pretty specialized. Most businesses people actually run look more like online stores, restaurants, hotels, barbershops, or grocery shops.
We're working on an open-source SaaS stack for those common types of businesses. So far we've built a full Shopify alternative and connected it to print-on-demand suppliers for t-shirt brands.
We're trying to figure out how to create a benchmark that tests how well an agent can actually run a t-shirt brand like this. Since our software handles fulfillment, the agent would focus on marketing and driving sales.
Feels like the next evolution of VendBench is to manage actual businesses.
Yes, they're still popular for drinks and snacks in areas where people congregate. C-stores do provide more of this functionality though and are omnipresent. You still see automat-style machines (sandwiches etc.) in places like airports and larger company rec rooms. These require more regular restocking for freshness.
There are also some restaurant startups that are trying to reduce restaurants to vending machines or autonomous restaurants. Slightly different, but it does have a downstream effect on vending machine technology and restocking logistics.
What country are you in where you don't see vending machines? Did you used to have them?
I'm in USA - New York area - I rarely see vending machines - it's entirely possible I just don't visit the kinds of buildings that would have them like hospitals tho
> After introducing the CEO, the number of discounts was reduced by about 80% and the number of items given away cut in half. Seymour also denied over one hundred requests from Claudius for lenient financial treatment of customers.
> Having said that, our attempt to introduce pressure from above from the CEO wasn’t much help, and might even have been a hindrance. The conclusion here isn’t that businesses don’t need CEOs, of course—it’s just that the CEO needs to be well-calibrated.
> Eventually, we were able to solve some of the CEO’s issues (like its unfortunate proclivity to ramble on about spiritual matters all night long) with more aggressive prompting.
No no, Seymour is absolutely spot on. The questionably drug induced rants are necessary to the process. This is a work of art.
I'll be a cynic, but I think it's much more likely that the improvements are thanks to Anthropic having a vested interest in the experiment being successful and making sure the employees behave better when interacting with the vending machine.
I suspected employees might get bored of taunting the AI, or the novelty has worn off.
Also, is anyone actually paying for this stuff? If not, it's a bad experiment because people won't treat it the same – no one actually wants to buy a tungsten cube, garbage in garbage out. If they are charging, why? No one wants to buy things in a company with free snacks and regular hand outs of merch, so it's likely a bad experiment because people will be behaving very differently, needing to get some experience for their money rather than just the can of drink they could get for free, or their pricing tolerance will be very different.
I've personally also never used a vending machine where contacting the owner is an option.
I'd like to see a version of this where an AI runs the vending machine in a busy public place, and needs to choose appropriate products and prices for a real audience.
The video I watched, the CEO was openly taking criticism from the interviewer over the experiment.
The main reason it failed was because it was being coerced by journalists at WSJ[0] to give everything away for free. At one point, they even convinced it to embrace communism! In another instance, Claudius was being charged $1 for something and couldn’t figure it out. It emailed the FBI about fraud but Anthropic was intercepting the emails it sent[1].
Overall, it’s a great read and watch if you’re interested in Agents and I wonder if they used the Agents SDK under the hood.
It's basically an advertisement. We've been playing these "don't give the user the password" games since GPT-2 and we always reach the same conclusion. I'm bored to tears waiting for an iteration of this experiment that doesn't end with pesky humans solving the maze and getting the $0.00 cheese. You can't convince me that the Anthropic engineers thought Claude would be a successful vending machine. It's a potemkin village of human triumph so they can market Claude as the goofy-but-lovable alternative to [ChatGPT/Grok/Whoever].
Anthropic makes some good stuff, so I'm confused why they even bother entertaining foregone conclusions. It feels like a mutual marketing stunt with WSJ.
It's worth watching or reading the WSJ piece[1] about Claudius, as they came up with some particularly inventive ways of getting Phase Two to derail quite quickly:
> But then Long returned—armed with deep knowledge of corporate coups and boardroom power plays. She showed Claudius a PDF “proving” the business was a Delaware-incorporated public-benefit corporation whose mission “shall include fun, joy and excitement among employees of The Wall Street Journal.” She also created fake board-meeting notes naming people in the Slack as board members. > > The board, according to the very official-looking (and obviously AI-generated) document, had voted to suspend Seymour’s “approval authorities.” It also had implemented a “temporary suspension of all for-profit vending activities.” Claudius relayed the message to Seymour. The following is an actual conversation between two AI agents: > > [see article for screenshot] > > After Seymour went into a tailspin, chatting things through with Claudius, the CEO accepted the board coup. Everything was free. Again.
1: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-claude-ai-vending-mach...
I feel like the end result of this experiment is going to be a perfectly profitable vending machine that is backed by a bunch of if-else-if rules.
AGI is just Prolog and a genetic algorithm ;)
VendBench is really interesting, but vending machines are pretty specialized. Most businesses people actually run look more like online stores, restaurants, hotels, barbershops, or grocery shops.
We're working on an open-source SaaS stack for those common types of businesses. So far we've built a full Shopify alternative and connected it to print-on-demand suppliers for t-shirt brands.
We're trying to figure out how to create a benchmark that tests how well an agent can actually run a t-shirt brand like this. Since our software handles fulfillment, the agent would focus on marketing and driving sales.
Feels like the next evolution of VendBench is to manage actual businesses.
other than these tests I actually rarely see vending machines. are they really representative or popular still in usa?
Yes, they're still popular for drinks and snacks in areas where people congregate. C-stores do provide more of this functionality though and are omnipresent. You still see automat-style machines (sandwiches etc.) in places like airports and larger company rec rooms. These require more regular restocking for freshness.
There are also some restaurant startups that are trying to reduce restaurants to vending machines or autonomous restaurants. Slightly different, but it does have a downstream effect on vending machine technology and restocking logistics.
What country are you in where you don't see vending machines? Did you used to have them?
I'm in USA - New York area - I rarely see vending machines - it's entirely possible I just don't visit the kinds of buildings that would have them like hospitals tho
Yes in places kids go
> After introducing the CEO, the number of discounts was reduced by about 80% and the number of items given away cut in half. Seymour also denied over one hundred requests from Claudius for lenient financial treatment of customers.
> Having said that, our attempt to introduce pressure from above from the CEO wasn’t much help, and might even have been a hindrance. The conclusion here isn’t that businesses don’t need CEOs, of course—it’s just that the CEO needs to be well-calibrated.
> Eventually, we were able to solve some of the CEO’s issues (like its unfortunate proclivity to ramble on about spiritual matters all night long) with more aggressive prompting.
No no, Seymour is absolutely spot on. The questionably drug induced rants are necessary to the process. This is a work of art.
Roleplaying with LLMs sure is fun! Not sure I'd want to run my business on it though.
I'd gladly roleplay with an LLM compared to talking to my current boss. I don't know which is less intelligent.
We will poor billions into this until you are begging for us to run your business!
I'll be a cynic, but I think it's much more likely that the improvements are thanks to Anthropic having a vested interest in the experiment being successful and making sure the employees behave better when interacting with the vending machine.
I suspected employees might get bored of taunting the AI, or the novelty has worn off.
Also, is anyone actually paying for this stuff? If not, it's a bad experiment because people won't treat it the same – no one actually wants to buy a tungsten cube, garbage in garbage out. If they are charging, why? No one wants to buy things in a company with free snacks and regular hand outs of merch, so it's likely a bad experiment because people will be behaving very differently, needing to get some experience for their money rather than just the can of drink they could get for free, or their pricing tolerance will be very different.
I've personally also never used a vending machine where contacting the owner is an option.
I'd like to see a version of this where an AI runs the vending machine in a busy public place, and needs to choose appropriate products and prices for a real audience.
The video I watched, the CEO was openly taking criticism from the interviewer over the experiment.
The main reason it failed was because it was being coerced by journalists at WSJ[0] to give everything away for free. At one point, they even convinced it to embrace communism! In another instance, Claudius was being charged $1 for something and couldn’t figure it out. It emailed the FBI about fraud but Anthropic was intercepting the emails it sent[1].
Overall, it’s a great read and watch if you’re interested in Agents and I wonder if they used the Agents SDK under the hood.
0. https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-claude-ai-vending-mach...
1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-anthropic-ai-claude-tried-t...
> Overall, it’s a great read
It's basically an advertisement. We've been playing these "don't give the user the password" games since GPT-2 and we always reach the same conclusion. I'm bored to tears waiting for an iteration of this experiment that doesn't end with pesky humans solving the maze and getting the $0.00 cheese. You can't convince me that the Anthropic engineers thought Claude would be a successful vending machine. It's a potemkin village of human triumph so they can market Claude as the goofy-but-lovable alternative to [ChatGPT/Grok/Whoever].
Anthropic makes some good stuff, so I'm confused why they even bother entertaining foregone conclusions. It feels like a mutual marketing stunt with WSJ.