We Let AI Run Our Office Vending Machine. It Lost Hundreds of Dollars
23 comments
·December 18, 2025N_Lens
spwa4
Replace AI with humans and you have half the idea behind "the art of deception" by Kevin Mitnick.
So I'm not sure what companies were expecting from the promise to make programs more like humans.
Tarsul
After watching the video: It feels like this is basically the same result as what would've happened with ChatGPT in December 2022 with a custom prompt. I mean ok, probably more back and forth to break it but in the end... it feels like nothing's really changed, has it? (and yes, programmers might argue otherwise, but for the general "chatbot" experience for the general audience I really feel like we are treading water)
lukaspetersson
Lukas from Andon Labs here!
WSJ just posted the most hilarious video about our AI vending machines. I think you'll love it.
Lerc
I take it you went into this knowing it was a bad idea in the long tradition of making amusing bad choices for entertainment purposes (like replacing car tires with saw blades, or making an axe out of nothing but wood)
dkdcio
I can’t read the article
willvarfar
its a video? There was a preroll ad but you can also just click listen for the soundtrack.
dkdcio
you are correct, I instinctively dismissed that as an ad and saw the paywall. my bad!
edit: eh yeah as you say there’s also an ad. my logic is “this looks cool, I’d like to learn about this” => click => “oh you’re just trying to sell me something never mind”
null
lukaspetersson
The Youtube video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpPhm7S9vsQ
freitasm
Hilarious. Anthropic saying the WSJ was a great red team.
Imagine this on the hands of Facebook scammers, then. It wouldn't last the two hours it took WSJ journalists to exploit it.
mdrzn
It's just a WSJ video about this article from June: https://www.anthropic.com/research/project-vend-1
lukaspetersson
Not really, we (Andon Labs) made WSJ their own machine
ChrisArchitect
Related from June:
Project Vend: Can Claude run a small shop? (And why does that matter?)
bossyTeacher
AI = Transformer
There is a nuanced understanding lost here.
I feel this kind of wordings will harm post-transformer AI in the future as investors will look at past articles like this to try to decide if an AI investment is worth it. Founders will need to explain why their AI is different and the usage of AI for different technologies will greatly affect their funding.
Hendrikto
This happens every time. We have had two “AI winters” already.
bulbar
AI has always been the name for the state of the art of complex problem solving.
josefritzishere
Can we just hit pause on AI. It is clearly not ready for prime time.
Anonbrit
How do you get it ready for the prime-time without using it and finding the problems? This is exactly the sort of experiment that finds problems - low stakes, fun to tell stories about, and gives engineers a whole lot of reproducible bugs that they can work on.
The people who lose their prod database to AI bugs, or the lawyers getting sanctioned for relying on OpenAI to write court documents? There's also good - their stories serve as warnings to other people about the risks.
josefritzishere
As we see these beta products get piloted in the real world... and fail spectacularly over and over... it argues for more time with the QA team. A few weeks ago CoPilot couldn't tell you how many times the letter B appeared in the word "blueberry."
lucideng
Nope! The hype train has left the station! WOOOOO WOOOO!
Seriously, I completely agree with you.
ttcbj
This article is the second time I have seen a news outlet try to 'break' the vending machine experiment. That is definitely really entertaining. In this case, they convinced the AI that it lived in a communist country and it was part of an experiment in capitalism. That's funny!
But I really wish Anthropic would give the technology to a journalist that tries working with it productively. Most business people will try to work with AI productively because they have an incentive to save money/be efficient/etc.
Anyway, I am hoping someone at Anthropic will see this on HN, and relay this message to whatever team sets up these experiements. I for one would be fascinated to see the vending machine experiment done sincerely, with someone who wants to make it work.
The reality is that even most customers are smart enough to realize that driving a business they rely on out of business isn't in their interest. In fact, in a B2B context, I think that is often the case. Thanks.
Putting AI where there's even a remote need for access control or security (Such as a vending machine) is a recipe for such outcomes. AI in its current iteration seems to be unable to be secured.