by Ploum on 2025-12-19
You probably heard about the Wall Street Journal story where they had a snack-vending machine run by a chatbot created by Anthropic.
At first glance, it is funny and it looks like journalists doing their job criticising the AI industry. If you are curious, the video is there (requires JS).
But what appears to be journalism is, in fact, pure advertising. For both WSJ and Anthropic. Look at how WSJ journalists are presented as "world class", how no-subtle the Anthropic guy is when telling them they are the best and how the journalist blush at it. If you are taking the story at face value, you are failing for the trap which is simple: "AI is not really good but funny, we must improve it."
The first thing that blew my mind was how stupid the whole idea is. Think for one second. One full second. Why do you ever want to add a chatbot to a snack vending machine? The video states it clearly: the vending machine must be stocked by humans. Customers must order and take their snack by themselves. The AI has no value at all.
Automated snack vending machine is a solved problem since nearly a century. Why do you want to make your vending machine more expensive, more error-prone, more fragile and less efficient for your customers?
What this video is really doing is normalising the fact that "even if it is completely stupid, AI will be everywhere, get used to it!"
The Anthropic guy himself doesn’t seem to believe his own lies, to the point of making me uncomfortable. Toward the ends, he even tries to warn us: "Claude AI could run your business but you don’t want to come one day and see you have been locked out." At which the journalist adds, "Or has ordered 100 PlayStations."
And then he gives up:
"Well, the best you can do is probably prepare for that world."
None of the world class journalists seemed to care. They are probably too badly paid for that. I was astonished to see how proud they were, having spent literally hours chatting with a bot just to get a free coke, even queuing for the privilege of having a free coke. A coke that cost a few minutes of minimum-wage work.
So the whole thing is advertising a world where chatbots will be everywhere and where world-class workers will do long queue just to get a free soda.
And the best advice about it is that you should probably prepare for that world.
I’m Ploum, a writer and an engineer. I like to explore how technology impacts society. You can subscribe by email or by rss. I value privacy and never share your adress.
I write science-fiction novels in French. For Bikepunk, my new post-apocalyptic-cyclist book, my publisher is looking for contacts in other countries to distribute it in languages other than French. If you can help, contact me!