alt Hacker News> This feels forced, there are obvious and good reasons for running that experiment. Namely, learning how it fails and to generate some potentially viral content for investor relationship. The second one seems like an extremely good business move. It is also a great business move from WSJ, get access to some of that investor money in an obviously sponsored content bit that could go viral.
That's... exactly what the author said in the post. But with the argument that those are cynical and terrible reasons. I think it's pretty clear the "you" in "why would you want an AI" vending machine is supposed to be "an actual user of a vending machine."
I think you’re overstating your own interpretation of what the author wrote. If we’re going to take your use of the word “exactly” (with emphasis) for real then I’d argue that the author offers no charitable reasons for why the experiment took place.
The closest that I think he even gets to one is:
> At first glance, it is funny and it looks like journalists doing their job criticising the AI industry.
Which arguably assumes that journalists ought to be critical of AI in the same way as him...