Re:We gave an AI a 3 year retail lease and asked it to make ...
by anon84873628 on Thursday April 16, 2026 @01:30PM
(#47796747)
If I'm being charitable, it's more about the ability to orchestrate and resolve tradeoffs across these different tasks / domains? The overall C&C, presumably. Which is still not so surprising.
Really it's an excuse for the company to test all the harnesses and tools they have built to make it work.
Re:We gave an AI a 3 year retail lease and asked it to make ...
by fl4ppyb3ngt on Thursday April 16, 2026 @01:41PM
(#47796879)
i agree that some of these things we could have already guessed-- like yes agents can research stuff and order stuff off the internet. I think what will be a lot more interesting is the interactions that happen between Luna the agent running things and the employees it hired. I guess less about AI being able to do the procurement CEO level stuff, and more how it does the HR level aspects of store management. That seems more important in the log run, because like you said, we already know capabilities are there. I think what Andon Labs is doing is more about the safety aspect now. Seems that way at least with how transparent they are about Luna losing money and messing up lol
The only thing that I saw demonstrated, and again, I skimmed, is what many thousands of software developers using AI tools to write their boilerplate already know: these tools, as of now, are great at going through the motions. A successful retail business, and I spent many years in the retail industry, isn't about putting together a nice store front, hiring clerks, and selecting just any-old-products: it's about being profitable. In traditional retail one of most important things is getting the right real estate for your target market... seems like that choice was made already in this case. Yes, a nice store front and good clerks are important, but I've worked in chains which were immaculately designed and built stores with great clerks that failed... and some that opened little more than fluorescent lighted hellscapes with clerks that barely cared that succeeded. In both cases the overall quality of the decisions and strategies relative to the target markets mattered to the success of the business. Just going through the motions didn't.
So if all is this is to say AI can do the things people generally do in these circumstances then sure, you didn't need this much human effort to prove that.... developer types do that at scale everyday now. If there was something different that this company is trying to learn, I'd be much more interested in that.