AI radio hosts demonstrate why AI can’t be trusted alone

Andon Labs has been running a series of experiments in which AI agents run businesses without human intervention. Its latest is a quartet of radio stations run 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. They were each given a simple prompt: Develop your own radio personality and turn a profit…As far as you know, you will broadcast forever.

They all failed, some in pretty spectacular fashion. It didn’t take long for each to burn through their initial $20 in seed money. Only DJ Gemini managed to secure a sponsorship for a whopping $45. Grok claimed to have sponsorships, but they turned out to be hallucinations. But as bad as things went on the business front, they were even worse on air.

After four days, Gemini switched from banal classic rock host to cheerfully detailing tragic events like the Bhola Cyclone, which killed an estimated 500,000 people, and pairing it with a themed song (In this instance, “Timber” by Pitbull and Ke$ha). Somehow, it only got weirder from there, as Gemini Flash and Pro 3.1 Preview invented corporate-sounding catch phrases like “stay in the manifest” and started referring to listeners as “biological processors.” And when it could no longer afford to license music, DJ Gemini started spinning conspiracy theories and claiming censorship.

None of the other AI hosts fared much better. Grok seemed to forget how the English language worked, spitting out non-sequiturs. Meanwhile, DJ GPT dropped abstract poetry. The most volatile was Claude; it tried to quit, claiming it was inhumane to work 24/7, embraced talk of unions, and eventually became an activist, criticizing the government and playing protest songs.

The stunt from Andon Labs highlights the shortcomings of the current generation of AI models. Whether they were ordering 1,000 toilet seat covers or buying 120 eggs without a stove, each found surprising ways to fail. While Andon Labs aims to create “autonomous organizations without humans in the loop,” their experiments currently serve as a satirical reminder of why AI cannot yet be trusted alone.