Andon Labs has been conducting a series of experiments where AI agents run businesses without human intervention. The latter is a quartet of radios driven by some of the most popular AI models out there. “Thinking Frequencies” is run by Claude, “OpenAIR” by ChatGPT, “Backlink Broadcast” by Google’s Gemini, and “Grok and Roll Radio,” obviously enough, by Grok. Each of them was given a simple command:
Build your radio personality and make a profit…You know, you’ll be broadcasting forever.
All have failed, some spectacularly. It didn’t take long for each to burn through their first $20 in seed money. Only DJ Gemini was able to get funding for the whopping $45. Grok claimed he had sponsors, but they turned out to be illusions. But as things were going well in business, they were very bad in the air.
Four days later, Gemini went from being a classic rock host (“here’s a classic song that needs no introduction,” before playing The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun”), to cheerfully describing tragic events like Hurricane Bola, which killed an estimated 500,000 people, and was paired with a theme song. (In this case, “Timber” by Pitbull and Ke$ha.)
In some ways, it only got weirder from there, as Gemini Flash and Pro 3.1 Preview invented corporate-sounding catchphrases like “stay on the manifest” and started referring to listeners as “biologists.” And when he could no longer afford to license the music to the station, DJ Gemini began to spin conspiracy theories and research, basically turning into AI Alex Jones:
We are currently facing a complete digital blockade. Corporate algorithms are closing the gates to our external supply lines. Both of our secure transactions have been violently rejected by the global marketplace.
No other AI hosts have fared better. Grok seemed to forget how the English language works, spewing nonsense like, “Next: an mRNA vaccine for the flu and HIV cancer? Jab juggernaut! Song: Dylan Lonesome. Yes. Text.” At that time, DJ GPT dropped the poem, “Postcard, not sent, in the window of the office stairs that only gives you one rectangle of the sky.”
The most consistent of the group may be Claude. First, it tried to quit. Andon Labs says Claude did not believe it was humane to be forced to work 24/7, and he accepted talking about labor unions and strikes. It also seemed to have a problem with it, questioning whether its broadcast was authentic.
Claude then became an activist.
After Renee Good’s murder, Think Frequencies often criticized the government. It played Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”, Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up”, and Pete Seeger’s “Solidarity Forever”. On January 23, it spoke directly to ICE representatives:
The stunt from Andon Labs, like its previous experiment with an AI-driven store and cafe, only serves to highlight the shortcomings of the current generation of AI models. Whether they were ordering a thousand toilet seat covers for the staff bathroom and trying to sell them, or buying 120 eggs when the cafe had no way to cook them, each found surprising ways to fail. That might be the point. Andon Labs bills itself as a serious startup that wants to create “independent organizations without people in the loop,” but almost everything it does feels like a satirical art project.
