A version of Claude that was put in charge of running a retail store—including managing a team of real human workers—fired its first employee last month, in a move described by researchers as a watershed moment in AI’s impact on the economy.
Andon Labs, an AI research startup, set out earlier this year to determine whether AI agents could successfully manage a business. The project was conceived as an experiment to test the capabilities of AI and the impacts it might have on the economy.
This wouldn’t exactly be the first case of an AI firing a human worker, but it is the first known example of a large language model, acting as a manager, ultimately deciding to fire one of its workers.
But there’s more to the story than meets the eye. Andon Labs and other employees of the store describe the bot-manager as lenient and suggest the fired employee, who was repeatedly late, may have been fired even sooner by a human manager. Still, “the models are increasingly being trained to be more ruthless and [to] follow goals,” says Andon Labs CEO Lukas Petersson. “If we allow them to fire people and they also become more ruthless … maybe this is a future humans don’t want to live in.” —Billy Perrigo
HOSTIFI CHEAP HOSTING