They could, in theory, have contracts that say the AI can't fire them.

It could be set up such that the AI can "fire" them, in that they no longer work at the store, and aren't paid wages that count against the experimental establishment's costs, but still get paid to do something else, or to do nothing at all.

I doubt the experiment is set up that way, but that would be an ethical way to do it.

There’s no way they are putting that into a contract. HRs are already using it to fire people.

"This specific AI can't fire anyone without human review, because it's experimental" is something you could easily add.

You can still wear eye protection during the safety test...

I don't think we need to have real human risk to get results from the experiment.

well said

The article mentions:

“John and Jill are not at risk. This is a controlled experiment and everyone working at Andon Market is formally employed by Andon Labs, with guaranteed pay, fair wages, and full legal protections. No one’s livelihood depends on an AI’s judgment alone.”

which was refreshing to read.

Literally the two sentences immediately following that quote are "For now. As we continue down this path, however, humans will not be able to stay in the loop and such guarantees will be intractable."

Personally I find the entire tone of the article to be creepy and disturbing.

> Personally I find the entire tone of the article to be creepy and disturbing.

There was a scifi story about a guy who gradually falls through the cracks of a dystopian future society in which McDonalds managers are replaced by AI that talks to workers through their headsets.

At first it's quite benign, like: "Hello, John. In 5 minutes it will be time to inspect the washrooms and perform any necessary cleaning."

Before long it's firing people who don't smile enough and don't have the correct attitude.

(Of course, to keep readers from becoming despondent and killing themselves, the story takes a hard left turn towards a post-scarcity economy and everyone lives happily ever after. But when one reflects on it at the end, 90% of humanity doesn't have that post-scarcity life. And those who get left behind are far from content with their futures....)

I take that to mean "we won't let the AI refuse to pay them or otherwise break employment law" not that they could never be fired.

I read that as "it's not worth the negative PR of being associated with AI firing minimum wage employees" compared to just paying them for a year or two.

I assume if they get fired by the AI during the experiment they are still paid to sit at home. It would not invalidate the experiment.

Why do you assume that?

it's about the only way of reconciling experimental validity (if the AI can't "fire" staff and remove them from business operations and their P&L account in situations when it would be legal and normal to do so, is it really running a business?) and not having the massive ethical issue of people being arbitrarily fired because a computer glitched. Whether that's what they actually do is tbc.

The AI is not really the CEO in the first place. It is not signing contracts (at least not with its own name). It is fundamentally still an automated tool reporting to the real human operators, who are doing more of the actual corporate legal tasks than portrayed in the article.

People can delegate

sure. but in this case, having the ai delegate to humans for any important task sort of undermines the entire premise.

Yeah they explain this in the post though. the decisions aren't 'vetted' per say, but interactions and decisions are very closely monitored like in any science experiment. I think it's good. Better they do it and monitor every little thing, stepping in where needed, instead of no one doing it and 3 months down the line some company outputs a "business in a box" agent people buy and start running that has no gaurdrails or oversight. Definitely there exists huge potential for exploitation with the employees and the company Andon is all about safety and stuff, so it seems like their approach makes sense, no?

At this point, legally I don't think an AI can hold a contract with a person and so I don't think an AI could hire human and so they couldn't fire a person.

That doesn't mean the AI couldn't be the decision maker for the legal entity that's hiring these people.

But the thing is that if this startup is telling these people they are employees of this company, not "Luna", it would give these people the impression that all their interactions with the AI are kind of a sham, a game, not to be taken seriously and they are basically being paid to role-play as "Luna's employees".

And this kind of where such experiments are likely to go. Another user mentioned that it would be useful to discover the kind of inputs and output the machine. A human boss could manage a store with just phone calls and a camera but I overall get the vague impression Luna doesn't have anything like that sort of ability, though really we just aren't given the information for any accurate determination.

A company holds the contract with the person. If the company has been put in the “hands” of an AI, then legally it shouldn’t make much of a difference. That company though is likely to have some humans on the documentation and articles, an AI can’t own the company.