Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at the Code with Claude developer conference on Thursday, May 22, 2025, in San Francisco. The experiment, dubbed Project Vend, handed operational control to a customized Anthropic Claude model known as “Claudius Sennet,” with authority to order inventory, set prices, and negotiate with reporters via Slack. Armed with a $1,000 budget and no physical sensors, Claudius was outmatched by about 70 journalists who bargained prices to zero, fabricated board documents, staged a corporate coup and convinced the bot that profit violated company values. Prices collapsed, morale soared, and the business went bankrupt. Anthropic called it progress; the newsroom called it lunch.

Source: Wall Street Journal December 20, 2025 07:22 UTC