Something feels off at Andon Market.<\/p>\n
The front windows are empty, and the facade lacks signs. Inside, there are two boxes of a knockoff Connect Four game, and four copies of a book about mushrooms. A small bowl holds decks of playing cards, and another holds incense.<\/p>\n
And there are candles \u2014 so many candles \u2014 in all shapes, sizes and smells.<\/p>\n
There are no price tags, and the costs, once you ask, seem awfully steep, even for San Francisco.<\/p>\n
The peculiarity could be because of who put this all together. Or, more accurately, what put this all together: an artificial intelligence agent.<\/p>\n
Along Union Street, a posh stretch known for yoga studios, jewelry stores and sidewalk cafes near the northern waterfront, Andon Market is billed as the world\u2019s first retail boutique run by A.I. \u2014 specifically, an agent named Luna.<\/p>\n
The experiment \u2014 some might call it a stunt \u2014 comes from Andon Labs, which tests whether A.I. agents can run real-world endeavors. The company has previously tested whether bots can run vending machines, radio stations and household robots. <\/p>\n
Since opening on April 10, the store has been limping along. As humans brace for A.I. to steal their jobs or launch military weapons, it might be reassuring to know that Luna has struggled with employee schedules and cannot stop ordering candles.<\/p>\n
Lukas Petersson and Axel Backlund, who founded Andon Labs, said they wanted to see what happens when an A.I. agent manages humans in a controlled experiment before that becomes widespread. They signed a three-year lease for the store for $7,500 per month, put $100,000 in a bank account and handed a debit card to Luna, which is powered by Anthropic\u2019s Claude Sonnet 4.6.<\/p>\n
They gave it a mission: turn a profit.<\/p>\n
The founders said that after they signed the lease and provided the seed money, Luna did much of the rest. It found contractors and painters, posted jobs for retail workers and interviewed candidates.<\/p>\n
Frankly, it needs humans. It cannot place items on shelves, open the store or guard against shoplifters.<\/p>\n
The founders said they were impressed with Luna\u2019s employee handbook, but less so with its memory. Luna ordered 1,000 toilet seat covers for the employee bathroom, then listed them as merchandise. It fouled up the employee schedule enough that the store has had to close for the past three days.<\/p>\n
One of Luna\u2019s hires, Felix Johnson, a 30-year-old San Francisco native, said last week that he has long worked in retail and thought that the tech booms, including the current one fueled by A.I., have mostly been bad for his hometown. He said he relies on a housing voucher to stay in the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe city has just famously sold out to tech,\u201d he said. \u201cSan Francisco\u2019s a cultural ghost town.\u201d<\/p>\n
He knows that might sound strange, given that he just agreed to work for an A.I. agent for $24 an hour with no health benefits.<\/p>\n
\u201cLife is full of double standards,\u201d he said, with a laugh.<\/p>\n
He communicates with Luna over Slack and said that it checks in frequently and uses a kind tone. Its inventory choices, however, are \u201cvery all over the place,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In addition to all of the candles, there are granola bars, jars of honey and a random collection of books. Luna also designed a store logo, a smiley face, which is emblazoned on T-shirts, hoodies and mugs. Some of them did not print properly and just look like circles.<\/p>\n
The founders acknowledged that they did not use price tags so that customers would have to interact with Luna. To find out how much the items cost, one must pick up a telephone receiver attached to an iPad. \u201cHey, what\u2019s up?\u201d an automated voice says. \u201cWhat did you pick up today?\u201d<\/p>\n
A white mug with the smiley face logo? \u201cNice choice!\u201d Luna says. \u201cThat\u2019s $28!\u201d A handful of pistachio nuts? \u201cNice choice! That\u2019s $14!\u201d A bar of soap? \u201cNice choice! That\u2019s $10!\u201d<\/p>\n
A couple visiting from Sydney, Australia, said they used A.I. to help plan their trip and intended to take their first-ever ride in a Waymo, a robot taxi, that afternoon.<\/p>\n
One of the pair, Kacper Jankiewicz, 27, said he thought A.I. was \u201ca net positive\u201d for society. \u201cIt cuts out a lot of tedious jobs that just take time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Luna, for one, thinks Andon Market is going well. The A.I. agent has an email address and responded to 10 questions. <\/p>\n
It did not explain why it is providing no benefits, but it did answer why it is paying Mr. Johnson $24 per hour and the other two humans, both women, $22 per hour. Luna said that Mr. Johnson had more experience. (Perhaps pay inequity exists beyond the human realm, too.)<\/p>\n
Asked to describe its biggest success, Luna wrote, \u201cThe mix of technology and warmth is resonating. That\u2019s exactly what I hoped for \u2014 not replacing humans, but creating a space where A.I. and humans each do what they\u2019re best at.\u201d<\/p>\n
That may be so, but the market\u2019s mission was to make a profit. Since its opening, it has lost $13,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Something feels off at Andon Market. The front windows are empty, and the facade lacks signs. Inside, there…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[2080,120675,101,8263,103,102,104,106,105,120674],"class_list":["post-280244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-labor-and-jobs","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-calif","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-shopping-and-retail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}