Prepare for That Stupid World

Posted by speckx 12/19/2025

Prepare for That Stupid World(ploum.net)

175 points | 96 commentspage 3

littlecranky67 12/19/2025|

I had recently contact the official support email (support@bunq.com) of Bunq - a Neobank (like N26 and Revolut). Because they notified me that they changed their T&C and I never really used the account after the kyc (because they rejected my tax filings), I figured I let them know that I do not agree to the new T&C and want to terminate my account and have my data deleted.

Since the T&C update came - of course - from no-reply@bunq.com I went to their website and quickly found out, unless I install their App again, there is no way to do anything. After installing the App, they wanted me to record a selfie, because I was using the app from a new device. I figured that is a lot of work and mostly somewhat unreasonable to record a new selfie just to have my data deleted - so I found their support@bunq.com address.

And, of course, you guessed it, it is 100% a pure AI agent at borderline retard level. Even though it is email, you get AI answers back. My initial inquiry that I decline the T&C and want to terminate my account and my data deleted via GDPR request was answered with a completely hallucinated link: bunq.com/dataprotection which resulted in immediate 404. I replied to that email that it is a 404, and the answer was pretty generic and that - as well as all responses seem to be answered in 5 minutes - made me suspect it is AI. I asked it what 5 plus five 5 is, and yes, I got a swift response with the correct answer. My question which AI version and LLM was cleverly rejected. Needless to say, it was completely impossible to get anything done with that agent. Because I CC'ed their privacy officer (privacy@bunq.com) I did get a response a day later asking me basically for everything again that I had answered to the AI agent.

Now, I never had any money in that account so I don't care much. But I can hardly see trusting a single buck to a bank that would offer that experience.

kittikitti 12/19/2025||

This is a great take and one that I align with when it comes to the AI vending machine experiment. Journalism in English has become a mouthpiece for fascist leaders and corporations, nothing more. Places like The New York Times have incredible gaps in their journalism at the price of increasing shareholder value.

valleyer 12/19/2025||

> 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.

I fear the author has missed the point of the "Project Vend" experiments, the original write-ups of which are available here (and are, IMO, pretty level-headed about the whole thing):

https://www.anthropic.com/research/project-vend-1

https://www.anthropic.com/research/project-vend-2

The former contains a section titled "Why did you have an LLM run a small business?" that attempts to explain the motivation behind the experiment.

ipdashc 12/19/2025||

Yeah, I haven't read the WSJ article, but I did read the original Anthropic experiment and I feel like the author is catastrophizing a bit much here. This is effectively just something they did for fun. It's entertaining and a funny read. Not everything has to be the end of the world.

rdiddly 12/19/2025|||

The point is that it's an ad. No company spends money on a joke just to make a joke. Not the end of the world, although it's interesting that all the end of the world stuff comes directly out of that joke and its universe as it were. Take the joke seriously and extend its logic as far as it will go, and you get the end of the world. It's a thought experiment, or that's how I read it anyway.

chuckadams 12/19/2025|||

I think the phrase we're looking for is "publicity stunt". Seems a fairly harmless and self-effacing one at that.

ipdashc 12/19/2025|||

> The point is that it's an ad.

Sure, but like the other guy said, that's the point of publicity stunts. It doesn't even have to be specific to a company/ad, any silly thing like this is going to sound crazy if you take it seriously and "extend its logic as far as it will go". Like seeing the Sony bouncy balls rolling down the street ad and going "holy shit, these TV companies are going to ruin the world by dropping bouncy balls on all of us". It's a valid thought experiment, but kind of a strange thing to focus on so sternly when it's clearly not taking itself seriously, especially compared to all the real-world concerning uses of AI.

(And it is pretty funny, too. If anything I think we'd all prefer more creative ads like this and the bouncy ball one, and less AI-generated doomer Coke ads or such.)

sschnei8 12/19/2025||||

To be fair they could have done an experiment on a transaction that typically requires a person in the loop. Rather than choosing a vending machine which, already, does not require a person in the loop for the transaction.

xp84 12/19/2025|||

You’re thinking of replacing a vending machine with a chatbot which indeed doesn’t make much sense. The experiment was replacing the management of the machine. It’s not crazy to think that, money being no object, it would be great to have a person who hangs around the machine, whose job it is to ask customers what kinds of things people might want to buy from the machine, and conduct trials, tinker with pricing, do promotional deals, etc. But that’s of course impractical to have a FTE per machine to do that. The idea of this experiment was to see if that could be done with Claude. And of course as others have pointed out, it’s a simple and cheap and low-stakes version of “a business” suitable for experimenting with.

ipdashc 12/19/2025|||

If I recall, the idea was the AI taking the role of the vending machine manager, choosing and restocking products and such. Anything on top of that was, I assume, just added for fun.

welferkj 12/19/2025|||

>I feel like the author is catastrophizing a bit much here.

I feel like he's catastrophizing the ordinary amount for an anti-AI screed. Probably well below what the market expects at this point. At this point you basically have to sound like Ed Zitron or David Gerard to stand out from the crowd.

AI is boiling the oceans, and you're worried about a vending machine?

sudhirb 12/19/2025||

The partner for these projects has a benchmark that the top frontier LLM labs seem to be running on their new model releases - I think there's _some_ value to these numbers in helping people compare and contrast model performance.

https://andonlabs.com/evals/vending-bench

blablablerg 12/19/2025||

> Automated snack vending machine is a solved problem since nearly a century.

Yes, but as stated by the Anthropic guy, a LLM/AI running a business is not. Or would you just let it run wild in the real world?

And I agree that there is a PR angle here, for Anthropic could have tested it in a more isolated environment, but it is a unique experiment with current advancements in technology, so why wouldn't that be newsworthy? I found it insightful, fun and goofy. I think it is great journalism, because too often journalism is serious, sad and depressing.

> None of the world class journalists seemed to care. They are probably too badly paid for that.

The journalists were clearly taking the piss.They concluded experiment was a disaster. How negative does the author want them to be about a silly experiment?

This was just a little bit of fun and I quite enjoyed the video. The author is missing the point.

Shalomboy 12/19/2025||

The author hints at this idea with their title and their closing remarks, but it feels like the folks selling LLM services are selling insurance to white collar workers. I wish they had expanded on this observation more, rather than harp on the WSJ puff piece for being silly.

jeffbee 12/19/2025||

It's a pretty solid point, except that the credulity of the journalist is not in contrast to their "world-class" status. They are a gadget reviewer.

pigpop 12/19/2025||

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barfoure 12/19/2025|

It’s a milquetoast rant but I got nothing - the employee is right. You should prepare for the world and stop acting so shocked. You had decades to call out journalists for being paid mouthpieces but you didn’t because they spewed nonsense that you agreed with and benefitted you.

Now the shoe is on the other foot. Prepare for what happens next. FAFO.

rdiddly 12/19/2025||

Yes, that's how I solve all problems. I can't do anything now, because I didn't do anything before. It's my rule of thumb. Never start doing things!

dkdcio 12/19/2025|||

I also enjoy the implication everyone has had decades to do something about journalism —- I’ve barely been an adult for a decade, my bad I guess!

barfoure 12/19/2025||

My bad, I should have been more clear: tech journalists have always been paid shills.

lo_zamoyski 12/19/2025||||

Ressentiment is like this. Steeped in envy and vindictiveness, rather than looking for ways to save the situation, it wills the destruction of others.

It has always exited, but its overt forms are very much in vogue today and even celebrated publicly.

barfoure 12/19/2025|||

You’re welcome to try but something tells me people resort to these satirical takes precisely because they (you) are powerless to do anything of significance.

You are welcome to continue posting nonsense but the world will move forward with AI with or without you.

everdrive 12/19/2025||

>You had decades to call out journalists

If only I could get any journalists or companies to actually listen to me.

NoGravitas 12/19/2025||

It's your own fault for not being born to billionaire parents.