Artificial intelligence (AI) startup Andon Labs has opened an AI-run retail store called Andon Market in San Francisco.
Andon Market serves as both a retail outlet and a live experiment conducted by Andon Labs, which tests how autonomous AI systems behave in real-world situations.
The venue was designed and developed by an AI agent named Luna after Andon Labs signed a three-year lease on the space in San Francisco.
The company handed the rest over to Luna to "do whatever it wanted with it", it said in a blog post.
The store is staffed by human employees "because Luna knew that she needed them, so she posted job listings, held phone interviews and in the end made a hiring decision", Andon Labs said.
Everything else in the store, including its products, prices, opening hours and decor, was decided by Luna.
AI agent Luna runs store
To achieve this, Luna was given a corporate credit card, a phone number, email and internet access, and eyes through security cameras.
"Luna is smart, but she does not have a physical body. And it turns out that many parts of running a physical store needs physical labour (eg painting the walls and preventing theft)," Andon Labs added.
"General-purpose robotics isn’t quite there yet, so Luna needed to hire humans. She used gig workers to build the store and full-time employees to run it."
Luna was able to find painters on Yelp, send an enquiry, provide instructions over the phone, and pay them after the job was completed. She also found a contractor to build the furniture and set up the shelving.
As for Andon Labs' experiment, human workers at the store "are not at risk", the company said.
"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," it added.
"No one’s livelihood depends on an AI’s judgment alone. 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."
Controlled AI experiment
As above, Andon Labs is a San Francisco-based startup that builds and tests AI agents that can complete real-world tasks.
It said the Andon Market project is "not for economic opportunity" or to "expand chain AI-run retail stores across the world".
"We’re doing this because we believe this future is coming regardless, and we’d rather be the ones running it first while monitoring every interaction, analyzing the traces, benchmarking how much autonomy an AI can responsibly hold," added Andon Labs.
Images courtesy of Andon Labs
