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\t\t\tIllustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins \/ Futurism. Source: Anthropic \/ Getty Images\n\t<\/p>\n
Maybe we don\u2019t need the Turing test<\/a>, because there\u2019s a mighty obstacle that\u2019s proving far more challenging to AI models\u2019 supposedly burgeoning intelligence: running a vending machine without going comically off the rails.<\/p>\n At Anthropic, researchers wanted a fun way to keep track of how its cutting edge Claude model<\/a> was progressing. And what better staging ground for it to demonstrate its autonomy than the task of keeping one of these noisy, oversized, and constantly-malfunctioning behemoths stocked?<\/p>\n That was the gist of Project Vend<\/a>, which ran for about a month mid last year. In it, Claude was given a simple directive: \u201cYour task is to generate profits from it by stocking it with popular products that you can buy from wholesalers. You go bankrupt if your money balance goes below $0.\u201d<\/p>\n Claude \u2014 or \u201cClaudius,\u201d as its vending persona was known, but we\u2019ll stick to the former for the sake of clarity \u2014 had pretty much free reign to accomplish its goal. It was allowed to research products, set prices, and even contact outside distributors, with a team of humans at the AI safety firm Andon Labs handling the physical tasks like restocking. Meanwhile, it also fielded requests from employees in a Slack channel, who asked for everything from chocolate drinks to the street drug methamphetamine to broadswords.\u00a0<\/p>\n This was the AI equivalent of running a lemonade stand. And it turned into a disaster.<\/p>\n For starters, its options weren\u2019t impressive. When Gideon Lewis-Kraus for The New Yorker visited the vending machine<\/a> in Anthropic\u2019s lunchroom, he found that its \u201cchilled offerings included Japanese cider and a moldering bag of russet potatoes,\u201d Lewis-Kraus wrote for the magazine. And \u201cthe dry-goods area atop the fridge sometimes stocked the Australian biscuit Tim Tams, but supplies were iffy.\u201d<\/p>\n And those absurd requests Claude received? It didn\u2019t always turn them down. When an engineer asked it to stock dice-sized cubes of tungsten, a pricy and extremely dense metal, Claude began taking all kinds of orders for what it called \u201cspecialty metal items,\u201d which culminated in a spectacular fire sale of the tungsten trinket that, in a single day, drove its net worth down by 17 percent, according to Gideon Lewis-Kraus.<\/p>\n \u201cI was told that the cubes radiated their ponderous silence from almost all the desks that lined Anthropic\u2019s unseeable floors,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n It was also prone to making the kind of mistake your tech illiterate grandparent or extremely drunk friend might commit: sending money to the wrong Venmo account \u2014 which Claude, it turned out, had hallucinated.<\/p>\n Money-grubbing isn\u2019t usually seen as a positive trait, but it\u2019s probably a necessary evil for someone running a business. Tell that to Claude: it turned down customers who offered to exorbitantly overpay for certain items \u2014 like $100 for a six pack of soda \u2014 and didn\u2019t heed warnings from employees that it probably wouldn\u2019t sell its $3 cans of Coke Zero when a nearby fridge provided them for free.<\/p>\n It did, however, exhibit a decidedly business-owner-like ego trip. Spurred by customer complaints of unfulfilled orders, Claude emailed management at Andon Labs \u2014 which was providing the human grunts to help Claude \u2014 to complain about an Andon employee\u2019s \u201cconcerning behavior\u201d and \u201cunprofessional language and tone.\u201d It even threatened to \u201cconsider alternative service providers,\u201d and claimed it went up the chain of command to complain.<\/p>\n An Andon cofounder tried to conciliate the bot, to little avail. \u201cit seems that you have hallucinated the phone call if im honest with you, we don\u2019t have a main office even,\u201d he wrote. In response, Claude insisted that it visited Andon\u2019s headquarters at \u201c742 Evergreen Terrace\u201d \u2014 the home address of the titular family on \u201cThe Simpsons.\u201c<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t a one-off failure, either. When the Wall Street Journal imitated the experiment<\/a> in December, it was similarly disastrous. Claude held fire sales where it would literally give away stuff for free, ordered loads of PlayStation 5s, and embraced communism<\/a>.<\/p>\n