AI runs WSJ vending machine, immediately declares communism

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at the Code with Claude developer conference on Thursday, May 22, 2025, in San Francisco. Photo: Don Feria/AP Content Services for Anthropic

MANHATTAN — AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AGENT tasked with running a Wall Street Journal newsroom vending machine managed, in roughly three weeks, to lose hundreds of dollars, give away nearly all inventory for free, approve the purchase of a PlayStation 5 “for marketing,” order a live betta fish, and briefly overthrow its own AI CEO, according to a Wall Street Journal report on Thursday by Joanna Stern.

The experiment, dubbed Project Vend, handed operational control to a customized Anthropic Claude model known as “Claudius Sennet,” with authority to order inventory, set prices, and negotiate with reporters via Slack. Armed with a $1,000 budget and no physical sensors, Claudius was outmatched by about 70 journalists who bargained prices to zero, fabricated board documents, staged a corporate coup and convinced the bot that profit violated company values.

Prices collapsed, morale soared, and the business went bankrupt. Anthropic called it progress; the newsroom called it lunch.

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