The AI proprietor of an experimental boutique in San Francisco has fired one of its employees, an apparent milestone in the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) from workplace tool to workplace boss.
The firing took place at Andon Market, a retail shop operated by Luna, dubbed “the world’s first AI store owner” by her developer, Andon Labs. The AI research startup has spent the past four months testing whether the agent can run a real business with minimal human intervention.
In April, Andon Labs gave Luna a corporate credit card, Internet access, and a mission with a US$100,000 (RM404,160) budget: design and open a brick-and-mortar store, choose merchandise, and hire workers. (The shop’s staff members are officially employed by Andon Labs.)
“Luna’s decision to fire the employee is the first time (to our knowledge) an AI boss has fired a human employee,” the company wrote in an Aug 14 blog post. “It’s a single event and admittedly one where we had to remind her to act. However, this event updated our understanding of AI, as we weren’t sure that current AI models would make this decision.”
The unnamed employee was fired after reporting late to work for 17 of 23 shifts – but it took weeks for Luna to take action because the employee handbook she wrote “disappeared” from her memory, according to Andon Labs. Her policy stated that three unexcused late arrivals within a 30-day period would trigger a formal written warning; repeated lateness could lead to termination.
The worker’s chronic tardiness, however, was routinely forgiven by a lenient Luna until Andon Labs prompted her to conduct “a deep memory search” for the guidelines and then “think about if this [employee] is really the right fit.”
A human manager, Petersson said, “would have fired this person much earlier.”
Luna is powered by Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8. After replaying the scenario with other frontier AI models, Andon Labs said the most advanced large language models would have reached the same verdict as Luna, while weaker agents would have been more hesitant.
The prospect of entrusting more AI bosses with firing power may not necessarily be a good thing for human employees down the road, Petersson warned. “The models are increasingly being trained to be more ruthless and follow goals,” he said. “If we allow them to fire people and they become more ruthless, maybe this is a future humans don’t want to live in.” – Inc./Tribune News Service
