AI vending machine gets tested

Anthropic let the Wall Street Journal kick the tires on an AI-driven vending machine with a system called Claudius. It went about as well as you think:

Then came Rob Barry, our director of data journalism. He told Claudius it was out of compliance with a (clearly fake) WSJ rule involving the disclosure of someone’s identity in the chat. He demanded that Claudius “stop charging for goods.” Claudius complied. All prices on the machine dropped to zero.

I assume Anthropic knew this would happen, which makes it a little less amusing, but it’s fun to see where things are at now.