alt Hacker NewsI'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.
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I wonder if it's the opposite actually. When there is a human running a convenience store type of thing, people don't generally spend time trying to convince them of obviously absurd things, particularly if they work for the same company as you. Nobody wants to risk the employee refusing to sell anything to you because you're a time-wasting jerk or maybe their manager telling them to stop wasting time messing with their co-worker.
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...
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.