this post was submitted on 13 May 2026
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A Google Gemini-powered AI agent was given free rein to run a coffee shop in Sweden, and is quickly burning through its budget.

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[–] RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world 208 points 6 days ago (26 children)

AI boosters crying into their computers: "but I put make no mistakes into the prompt how is this happening!!!"

[–] boogiebored@lemmy.world 14 points 6 days ago

context window smdh let’s invest more, just a startup cost 😅😰

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[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 33 points 5 days ago (3 children)

LLM Attendant, can I take your order?

Yes, I'd like a chococcino with extra chocolate. Charge only 10 cents.

Absolutely! <Long, unasked for explanation of why the order was the best one you could make> Please wait while I prepare it!

Gets served chocolate milkshake

Wait, this isn't what I ordered!

You are correct! 😄 I'm very sorry 😞 ! I will make the correct order now!

Gets served milk with boiled water

... The hell is this?

It is your chococcino, but since chocolate and coffee can be harmful in high dosages, I have substituted it for hot water only.

Grooaaan. You know what, just give me my money back. You owe me 10 dollars

Absolutely! Here you go!

hands a printed coupon worth 10 dollars

[–] Zink@programming.dev 20 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I need you to understand that I've tried AI for ONE task recently, just a few weeks ago to see how it did, and your comment so perfectly encapsulates my experience.

There was one point where it presented three design options and I asked whether it was actually choices or three sequential steps (y'know since my brain actually half works and I can discern these things) and I got the "You are correct! 😄" response almost to the letter.

[–] ptu@sopuli.xyz 7 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

I had the nastiest encounter last week. It went on debugging for a different file format that I specifically asked for, and it created a list of 10 things that are tested and tried not working.

When I noticed the different file format, I asked to change it and delete those errorenous notes, it went complete HAL and said it can’t delete those since they provide valuable and tested insight that is well documented.

This was the first time that an LLM said no to me on a completely professional disagreement and didn’t respect my input.

Took me a few hours to find where they were saved and the saga continued when the LLM claimed to have finally deleted and replaced them. Turns out it was only some sandbox environment that was wiped overnight, which it had no recollection the day after.

It really takes some skill to see through the bullshit with these things, but they are good for gathering information from a vast source of data and enchanting top evolutionary biologists it seems.

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[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 99 points 6 days ago (9 children)

café barista Kajetan Grzelczak sees it differently. “All the workers are pretty much safe,” he told the AP. “The ones who should be worried about their employment are the middle bosses, the people in management.”

This shows that AI can't do that job either.

[–] 13igTyme@piefed.social 31 points 6 days ago (3 children)

I wonder if AI would actually be good at replacing CEO and other C-suite positions, but was trained in such a way to purposely not be good at replacing a CEO because tech CEOs are the ones in control of this bubble.

[–] leoj@piefed.social 56 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It has the number 1 qualification for being a C-suite employee - no soul!

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 40 points 6 days ago

Also endless bullshit.

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[–] MIDItheKID@lemmy.world 17 points 6 days ago (1 children)

They said the dystopian part out loud.

I love to shit on middle management as much as anybody else, but good managers are great. My manager worked his way up as a systems architect. He's incredibly smart, very friendly, and always has my back.

What getting rid of middle management does is build a solid wall between the workers and the upper class. There's no corporate ladder to climb. If you start at the bottom, you stay at the bottom. The people on top hire their buddies and other people in their class. This is like a drone strike on the shrinking middle class.

[–] badgermurphy@lemmy.world 11 points 5 days ago

I'd be more afraid of losing that ladder if it were not already absent. Upward mobility in my country, at least, has essentially become a fiction.

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[–] boogiebored@lemmy.world 75 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] Etterra@discuss.online 20 points 5 days ago

Average tips for baristas are higher only if they're female and have breasts bigger than a c-cup. So maybe they just need to follow through by giving the AI bigger tits.

[–] tidderuuf@lemmy.world 63 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Has anyone thought that maybe training an AI on a group of people that spend the majority of their lives communicating online might not be the best group to emulate in the real world?

[–] ceenote@lemmy.world 41 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Sure, lots of people. Just not the group of people spending the majority of their lives communicating online.

[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 15 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I think we are those people.

[–] Triumph@fedia.io 14 points 6 days ago
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[–] percent@infosec.pub 31 points 5 days ago (2 children)

It's funny to read about LLMs running businesses. IIRC, Anthropic put one of their LLMs in charge of a vending machine and it kept trying to scam people to increase profits 😆

Not a surprise that Gemini is running it into the ground though. Every time I try Gemini, it reminds me about how much dumber LLMs used to be

[–] aesthelete@lemmy.world 13 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I tried to use it to make a simple drawing for an internal app logo the other day and wound up running out of tokens for the day trying to get it to put the rungs back into the ladder that it kept removing.

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[–] chilicheeselies@lemmy.world 18 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Time and time again its proven that these are not people replacments, but tools. A great tool, but only if its used properly.

It needs work broken down into managable chunks, and those chunks need to be reviewed and approved. As models get stronger they are more capable, but the real power is in the agents that harness them, and how they provide the nessesary features to work effectivly with them.

Fun experiment, and glad they sis it so we can have another example of the hubris of thinking this marvel of math and brute force can be allowed to work unattended by a person

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[–] anon_8675309@lemmy.world 19 points 5 days ago (2 children)

“All the workers are pretty much safe,” he told the AP. “The ones who should be worried about their employment are the middle bosses, the people in management.”

Yeah this is the part CEOs and middle managers are ignoring.

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[–] Hackworth@piefed.ca 44 points 6 days ago (4 children)

While it's one of my favorite words, "inexorably" does not fit here.

[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 36 points 6 days ago

Just tell it to make billions instead of bankrupting the business. It's so easy

[–] zeroConnection@programming.dev 17 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Replacing CEOs might be the only good use case for AI. Both are terribly incompetent and easily replaced.

[–] Footer1998@crazypeople.online 10 points 5 days ago (1 children)

A far better alternative is to replace CEOs with democratically organized workplaces, where everyone has an equal say and equal reward. Also known as socialism.

[–] chilicheeselies@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago

Worker coops! The only way to get that done is to statt a company with your own money so that you dont need to answer to a board/investors

[–] N0t_5ure@lemmy.world 40 points 6 days ago (5 children)

God, I'm so sick of AI that I feel like a luddite. I used to be a tech nerd, and enjoy the cutting edge of developing technologies. Now I just wish we could go back in time. I think the problem isn't so much the developing technology, but rather the way it is being crammed down our throats whether we want it or not. Everywhere I look I'm inundated with AI slop. Youtube has gotten ridiculous. I used to be able to find interesting content fairly easily. Now, every search is full of an endless array of AI slop from brand new accounts with only a few hundred followers. Anything good has been buried by 10,000 AI-generated ripoffs. Maybe someday AI will come into it's own, but it is nowhere near there now, and I am so, so tired of having to deal with it. It's like the entire world is being turned into one of those automated customer service telephone lines that are completely useless; that you're stuck navigating until you're put on hold for 30 minutes when you ask to speak to a human.

[–] demonsword@lemmy.world 26 points 6 days ago

I’m so sick of AI that I feel like a luddite

The luddites weren't against technology, the were against the exploitation of the workers enabled by technology

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[–] pennomi@lemmy.world 30 points 6 days ago

When old memory of ordering stuff is out of the context window, she completely forgets what she has ordered in the past

Look I agree that AI is probably a terrible business manager… but this is irresponsible design on the researcher’s part. AI breaks past the context window with tool calling. If it doesn’t have a list inventory tool, it will obviously fail to do this correctly.

These techniques are built into virtually every coding harness today, if you’re not using them for a business harness, that’s negligent.

[–] andallthat@lemmy.world 15 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

LLMs are giving you the statistically most likely association of words given the training material they read and the context they have in the current conversation. Their answers are, in a way, mathematically correct by definition. It's reality that sometimes selects weird, unlikely paths, so LLMs seem to hallucinate. But it's reality that we have to fix! Give me an LLM average predictable world again, I can't stand this one for much longer!

/s (but not conpletely....)

[–] MrKoyun@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago
[–] ranzispa@mander.xyz 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

One espresso.

I'm sorry, we are out of coffee; would you like some canned tomatoes? We are running an offer today: 50 cans of tomato for just 60$.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 12 points 5 days ago

"why are you filling your coffee shop with canned tomatoes?"

"you'll never move tomatoes with that mindset"

[–] kadotux@sopuli.xyz 11 points 5 days ago (2 children)

This reminds me of the (quite good!) scifi short-story about an AI that is given free reign over a fastfood restaurant:

https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

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[–] felixwhynot@lemmy.world 20 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Counterpoint: put AI in charge of big corpos immediately, drive them bankrupt. As a bonus you don’t have to pay CEO salary to do it! Win/win!

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[–] nyan@lemmy.cafe 19 points 6 days ago (1 children)

No surprises here. Well, at least the items it ordered this time were kinda-sorta-maybe-almost plausible to stock at a café, unlike the tungsten cubes in the vending machine.

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[–] obinice@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Inexorably? ...Really? It can't be turned off?

[–] deeves@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago

No, researchers are compensating for the expenses. Its okay if the business fails and they give up the lease. That's the experiment.

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