this post was submitted on 13 May 2026
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A Google Gemini-powered AI agent was given free rein to run a coffee shop in Sweden, and is quickly burning through its budget.

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[–] bluGill@fedia.io 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I wonder how each of us would do with the same 20k seed money? I'm sure some of us know something about managing a coffee shop and would do okay - but a lot of us don't know much about it and would make a lot of stupid mistakes as well.

[–] otacon239@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The difference being is that you’re far less likely to be asked what someone should do to manage their coffee shop. Imagine a coffee shop manager asked you what they should do to improve their business.

People got it in their heads that AI is an expert in these fields, but at best, I’d guess it has high school + a couple years of Gen Ed college courses but without any of the applicable life experience. I wouldn’t ask that person a damn thing about a specialty and I certainly wouldn’t hire them to own or manage a business out the gate.

[–] Triumph@fedia.io 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Considering the state of education in the US, its still probably better than asking a random person.

[–] otacon239@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

See:

without any life experience

I’d rather ask a moron with a corporeal being than someone who thinks they know everything but has never lived.

[–] jumperalex@lemmy.world -2 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] otacon239@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

The moron does not require a data center to give me wrong information.

[–] bright@piefed.social 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don't know if that's true, especially in comparison to ai. I think a competent random human would do research before taking charge of a coffee shop and be in reasonably good shape from day one. For sure some mistakes would be made, but i think generally the operation would run ok.

But all of that misses the key difference - a human doing this wouldn't be a random person, they would usually have relevant past experience, like previously being an assistant manager at a coffee shop. So they would manage the shop way better than this ai did.

Maybe if they create an ai that has been specially designed to manage a business then it might perform as well or better than a human, possibly. But just throwing a standard ai in the role is gonna work much less well than a human.

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

More importantly, even if they didn't have experience, they'd start learning as soon as they started the job. LLM chatbots have an extremely limited "memory". If you tell it something today, that info may be completely gone tomorrow.

[–] OwOarchist@pawb.social 2 points 14 hours ago

Yep. A human might be a poor manager at first, but if they keep trying, they'll get better at it.

This AI will never improve. It will always be just as bad at its job as it is now.