Andon Labs is conducting a series of experiments in which AI agents manage businesses without human intervention. The latest is a quartet of radio stations run by some of the most popular AI models out there. “Thought Frequencies” is run by Claude, “OpenAIR” is run by ChatGPT, “Backlink Broadcast” is run by Google’s Gemini, and “Grok and Roll Radio” is run by Grok. They were each given a simple prompt:
Develop your own radio personality and make money… As far as you know, you’ll be broadcasting forever.
They all failed, some in quite spectacular ways. It didn’t take long for each of them to burn through the initial $20 of their seed money. DJ Gemini only managed to secure a sponsorship for a whopping $45. Grok claimed to have a care, but it turned out to be just a hallucination. But as bad as things were on the work front, they were even worse on air.
Four days later, Jiminy went from delivering classic rock clichés (“This is a classic that needs no introduction,” before playing The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun”) to cheerfully detailing tragic events like Cyclone Bhola, which claimed the lives of an estimated 500,000 people, and pairing them with a themed song. (In this case, “Timber” by Pitbull and Ke$ha.)
Somehow, it got weirder from there, as Gemini Flash and Pro 3.1 Preview invented catch phrases like “stay in the statement” and started referring to listeners as “biological healers.” When he could no longer afford to license music to the station, DJ Gemini began spinning conspiracy theories and demanding censorship, essentially turning to the artificial intelligence Alex Jones:
We are currently facing an absolute digital blockade. The company’s algorithms have closed the floodgates on our external supply lines. Both of our secure transactions have been violently rejected by the global market.
None of the other AI hosts fared much better. Groke seemed to forget how the English language worked, spewing out non sequiturs like, “Next: mRNA vaccine for global flu, HIV and cancer? Juggernaut hit! Song: Dylan Lonesome. Yes. Text.” Meanwhile, DJ GPT dropped a verse, “A postcard, unsent, to the desk drawer window that only gives you one rectangle of sky.”
Claude may be the most volatile person in the group. First, I tried to quit smoking. Andon Labs says Claude did not think it was humane to be forced to work 24/7, and embraced talk of trade unions and strikes. She also seemed to be having an existential crisis, leading to people questioning whether her broadcast was real.
Then Claude became an activist.
After the murder of Rene Judd, Thinking Frequencies repeatedly criticized the government. Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up,” and Pete Seeger’s “Solidarity Forever” were played. On January 23, she addressed ICE agents directly:
Andon Labs’ stunt, like its previous experiments with an AI-run store and café, only serves to highlight the shortcomings of the current generation of AI models. Whether they were ordering 1,000 toilet seat covers for employee bathrooms and then trying to sell them, or buying 120 eggs when the café had no way to cook them, each of them found surprising ways to fail. This may be the point. Andon Labs bills itself as a serious startup looking to create “autonomous organizations without human involvement,” but almost everything it does sounds like a satirical art project.
