wire / 2026-08-14-b90e
Anthropic's Claude, tasked with running a San Francisco retail store, fired an employee and lost money
Handed a retail store to run, Anthropic's Claude fired a human for lateness and posted a loss. Andon Labs is writing the experiment up as a milestone anyway.
The facts
Andon Labs in San Francisco tasked Anthropic's AI assistant (Claude/Luna) with managing a retail store. The AI fired a human employee for repeated lateness, marking the first known instance of an AI manager terminating staff. The experiment resulted in significant financial losses for the business.