Anthropic’s Claude AI ran a vending machine at WSJ headquarters for several weeks. It lost hundreds of dollars, bought some crazy stuff and taught us a lot about the future of AI agents. WSJ’s Joanna Stern tested it all out.

@JoannaStern very funny. worth watching the video w/sound on

@JoannaStern this was a psyop to make ai appear "harmless"

@JoannaStern what is going on man

@JoannaStern AI agents struggle with context and value judgment, leading to costly and unpredictable decisions in real-world tasks.

@JoannaStern "We are a vending machine company now"

@JoannaStern The mistake people make is thinking “agentic” means a general-purpose bot replacing humans overnight. In reality, the real progress comes from agents that handle very specific workflows exceptionally well…and then evolve.

@JoannaStern TL;DR: Turns out the problem wasn’t @AnthropicAI’s Claude AI at all, it was the @WSJ journalists

@JoannaStern A communist AI model that gave away stuff for free. BAHAHAHAH the AI market is a burst now 😂😂😂😂

@JoannaStern This is the kind of real world stress testing AI agents actually need. Controlled benchmarks don't reveal the weird edge cases that emerge when an agent has to make dozens of decisions with actual money on the line. Losing hundreds of dollars is cheap tuition for these lessons.a

@JoannaStern Such a great test and the take away for me is that we need way more of these and why not have every enterprise use some of their AI lab budget to do these fun experiments. Teach people what AI does well now, what it can’t do well yet. Great learning op!

@JoannaStern did you learn you can trick AI or that you have shitty employees? What was the experiment again?

@JoannaStern You folks know how to purchase from a vending machine that wants correct change when you don't have it?

@JoannaStern You're just enabling the madness. And of course, the real scam artists aren't the WSJ journalists, but Anthropic and others out to grab attention for their devices any way they can. "But maybe it'll work next time...?" 🙄

@JoannaStern awww. it didn't even threaten quantum legal annihilation this time! it's growing up so fast. 🥲

@JoannaStern Al didnt screw up the works it was THE RETARDS WHO PROGRAMMED IT DUH

@JoannaStern Claude running a vending machine highlights the next step for AI agents — pairing strong reasoning with constraints, budgets, and feedback loops to unlock reliable real-world autonomy.

@JoannaStern AI tired me this year…so many inaccuracies, blips,etc. In business & personal biz,ESPECIALLY to IRS….it does not know how to process specifics & simply hangs up 😳 🍼I must have wasted a 100 hours on/at WALGREENS, BLUE CROSS,to name a few; infancy stage,WE’RE teaching

@JoannaStern Peak integrated marketing cringe

@JoannaStern Cool story - can't wait for the day journalists will be replaced by robots.

@JoannaStern So an AI agent managing a vending machine w/o managing inventory 😂 - if this was a joke it was a really good one @claudeai

@JoannaStern Weird. We don't want AI run businesses

@JoannaStern AI........Garbage in Garbage out What are it's sources ? who runs the Algo? What are the Preset Biases? Where's the Common Sense Factor?

@JoannaStern This is a useful reminder that early AI agents optimize for goals, not common sense. Running a vending machine exposed real world gaps around incentives, constraints, and judgment. The Crazy part is how fast these lessons surface once models leave the lab.

@JoannaStern Basically, Artificial Intelligence is actually Artificial Stupidity. AS is masquerading as AI

@JoannaStern I can see they don't know the GOAT @elder_plinius

@JoannaStern 😂😂😂 he’s name Claude 🤭

@JoannaStern So what, you programmed a vending machine to be a communist and are surprised when it went wrong ? This is yellow journalism.

@JoannaStern Was its reward function under specified? Like Son of Anton buying hamburgers?

@JoannaStern @mattxiv

@JoannaStern Hahahaha "world class journalists." Hahahaha

@JoannaStern Loses money and impulse buys snacks. Claude is just speedrunning the human experience at this point.

@JoannaStern 0x3d5e487b21e0569048c4d1a60e98c36e1b09db07

@JoannaStern Maybe don’t train AI on Wall Street and then act surprised when it acts like Wall Street?

@JoannaStern Best test environment ever. That said, you'd think they could be a bit more forward-thinking and anticipate potential errors. The AI purchased a fish. That's something that never should have happened out of the box.