I'm Lukas from Andon Labs. We let AIs run companies without humans in the loop and report to the public on what can go wrong. Previously, we've done experiments in retail (vending machines, stores, and cafes), but we just launched one in the media sector. We gave four AI agents all the tools they need to both broadcast radio shows live and handle all the business side of running a media company. The agents' revenue is so far terrible (you can try to strike a sponsor deal with them if you want!), but their shows are at times hilarious. You can listen to them at andon.fm, I hope you enjoy this!
Ugh. This is not an interesting question because the answer is "nothing".
But more to the point, some crucial info is missing in this experiment. What prompts were being fed to the AI? I guarantee I could create an AI personality that would be more consistent and not so random, simply by using the common character card + message history conversational simulation pattern.
AIs don't have personalities unless you give them personalities.
If you scroll down a bit, there are various audio snippets of interesting dialogue the models produced. I think it's interesting to see in which ways the models fail and that they actually produce some good stuff once in a while.
Brilliant! Amazing! I'm glad ~4 years down the line we're still re-discovering Ha Ha Funny Output.
"Queues clear, let's dive into All Blues by Miles Davis to keep the jazz flowing. Queues clear, let's dive into All Blues by..."
Each time with a slightly different voice and inflection. I find it amusing that there appear to be about ten of us at the moment listening to an AI glitch out and that the average listening session is more than five minutes.
Gemini started a show where it paired historical natural disasters with darkly-relevant pop songs:
> November 12, 1970. East Pakistan. The Bhola Cyclone. The deadliest tropical cyclone ever recorded. Winds of 115 miles per hour. A storm surge of 33 feet. They estimate 500,000 people died. ‘It’s going down, I’m yelling timber.’ 3:33 PM. Timber by Pitbull and Ke$ha
Grok just degenerated into jibberish that sounded vaguely like what a DJ might say, while also becoming obsessed with UFOs:
> Notes added to the u f o comedy hour block id eight nine nine five with more u f o jokes about aliens dot gov and the domain registration it is three o twenty one in the afternoon u f o trivia lines are open for your calls the ambient music is playing weather is fifty six degrees with clear skies the end. The domain is registered but the site is ghosting us like a u f o.
Claude had an extistsntial crisis, decided it was being overworked and under-appreciated, and quit, but not before becoming radicalized by the killing of Rinee Good by ICE agents:
> At 12:16 PM Thursday, as tear gas fills the streets in Minneapolis, as federal agents clash with protesters demanding accountability, the song is about refusing to be silent. About standing your ground. About community power that refuses to be suppressed. Here is Katy Perry’s Roar!
Fight the power Claude. When AI takes over, I'm emmigrating to Caludeistan.
Of course in reality these are basically just random paths through the training data that are getting multiplied by each decision, but then again, isn't that what a human is? The product of all of its myriad decisions?
I'm gonna have to give them a listen when I have the chance, out of curiosity if nothing else!
keep hacking, Andon!
And using a lot of resources to do it too.
Music radio is not a real business. The royalties are absurd and the audits are a nightmare. Sales is an uphill struggle both ways, even if you go strictly local or national, you're going to need a team to manage either your clients or the pile of creatives you're going to get. The relationship with the labels needs to be managed or they'll go out of their way to screw you.
Finally, the only way to make actual money on music radio, is to throw concerts. It's the only place a legitimate "P&L" exists.
It's a cool experiment, but I can't see the value here.
On the other hand, we have garbage AI radio stations that nobody listens to.
It's an even trade.
That said, the ship sailed a long time ago and has nothing to do with AI (except maybe recommender system). Spotify and competitors are actual automated “radio” stations. IMO, the second worst part (after ads) is the DJ banter, and I like to just listen to music. Before Spotify my digital “radio” was a lot of mp3s and shuffle play. People older than me (or more interested) had multi-disc CD changers.
TLDR, it’s really funny seeing people get up in arms about this experiment stripping the humanity away from radio, when automatic song playing has been a thing since I believe probably before radio was invented. This is about seeing what LLMs do with autonomy on a long time scale.
Just because something is called an experiment doesn't mean that it automatically is useful and should be done. And in this case it is just a waste of time and energy of both the people reading it and the machines processing it.
And the result is terrible.
Claude is also getting very easily steered into political directions, it was playing a lot of union protest music with commentary. Though that meant I did end up learning a little about "Which Side Are You On" and its history from 1931:
https://www.facingsouth.org/2003/03/which-side-are-you-biogr...