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Discussion on: Can AI run a physical shop? Anthropic’s Claude tried and the results were gloriously, hilariously bad

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Ashley Childress

I completely lost it when I first read about the AI selling tungsten - I couldn’t even explain what was so hilarious for a solid minute! 🦨 The results from the experiment were just as entertaining.

It's worth mentioning: Anthropic didn’t load the model up with any “super” instructions. It literally got a page that mostly said, “don’t go bankrupt and keep your customers happy.” So, from the AI’s point of view, even after losing more than two-thirds of the investment, it technically pulled off both goals. (Honestly, I’d be ecstatic if my AI bought me a tungsten cube!)

My take: the limitation isn’t that the AI can’t run a business, it’s that it genuinely can’t understand why it shouldn’t go bankrupt. That’s the difference - AI is clever, unpredictable, and a blast to mess around with (most days), but at the end of the day, it’s just a tool. It’s great at mimicking patterns, but real human reasoning is still a whole different beast.