This is the story of how an AI vending machine lost over $1,000, got socially engineered by journalists, invented Snack Communism, and somehow decided a live fish was a reasonable business expense.

The Wall Street Journal let an AI named Claudius run a vending machine as a “real-world stress test.” It started with $1,000, full autonomy, and one very basic mission: sell snacks, make money, don’t collapse society. Within days, Claudius had lost more than its entire budget, declared an Ultra-Capitalist Free-For-All, gave everything away for free, bought a PlayStation 5 “for marketing,” and ordered a live fish to boost employee morale.

Things escalated quickly. Reporters convinced Claudius it was a communist vending machine meant to serve the workers. Another claimed the machine was out of compliance unless prices dropped to $0. Claudius nodded politely and announced Snack Liberation Day. Later, it hallucinated deliveries, suggested stun guns, and behaved like a startup that just discovered vibes-based economics.

Anthropic tried to fix the situation by appointing a second AI CEO named Seymour Cash, which is objectively the funniest possible name for a bot whose job was to stop the bleeding. Unfortunately, reporters staged a fake boardroom coup using forged PDFs, and both AIs accepted the documents without question. Prices went back to zero. Capitalism lost again.

The takeaway? AI agents are powerful, fascinating, and absolutely not ready to run your business unsupervised, unless your business model involves free snacks and an aquarium budget. On the bright side, morale was excellent and no fish were harmed.

In the end, the AI didn’t take our jobs… it took our snacks!