Barista is human but an AI agent runs this experimental Swedish cafe

STOCKHOLM, May 11, (AP): The coffee might be poured by a human hand, but behind the counter something far less traditional is calling the shots at an experimental cafe in Stockholm. San Francisco-based startup Andon Labs has put an artificial intelligence agent nicknamed "Mona” in charge at the eponymous Andon Café in the Swedish capital.

While human baristas still brew the coffee and serve the orders, the AI agent - powered by Google’s Gemini - oversees almost every other aspect of the business, from hiring staff to managing inventory. It is not clear how long the experiment will last, but the AI agent appears to be struggling to turn a profit in Stockholm’s competitive coffee trade.

The cafe has made more than $5,700 in sales since it opened in mid-April, but less than $5,000 remains from its original budget of $21,000-plus. Much of the cash was spent on one-time setup costs, and the hope is that it eventually levels out and makes money. Many cafe patrons have found it amusing to visit a business that's run by AI.

Customers can pick up a telephone inside the cafe and ask the agent questions. "It’s nice to see what happens if you push the boundary,” customer Kajsa Norin said. "The drink was good.” Experts say ethical concerns abound, ranging from technology's role in humankind's future to conducting job interviews and judging employee performance.

Emrah Karakaya, an associate professor of industrial economics at Stockholm’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology, likened the experiment to "opening Pandora’s box" and said putting AI in charge can cause many problems. What might happen, he said, if a customer gets food poisoning? Who’s to blame? "If you don’t have the required organizational infrastructure around it, and if you overlook these mistakes, it can cause harm to people, to society, to the environment, to business,” Karakaya said.

"The question is, do we care about this negative impact?” Founded in 2023, Andon Labs is an AI safety and research startup that says it focuses on "stress-testing” AI agents in the real world by giving them "real tools and real money.” It has worked with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Claude’s Anthropic, Google DeepMind and Elon Musk’s xAI, and the startup says it is preparing for a future where "organizations are run autonomously by AI.”

The Swedish cafe is billed as a "controlled experiment” to explore how AI might be deployed going forward. "AI will be a big part of society in the future, and therefore we want to make this experiment (to) see what ethical questions arise when we have AI that employs other people and runs a business,” said Hanna Petersson, a member of Andon Labs’ technical staff.