The Agentic Resistance: Why Critics Are Missing the Paradigm Shift

A restrospective on Project Vend-1: How Thomas Kuhn's framework explains why institutional skepticism of agentic AI reflects predictable paradigm resistance rather than technological failure.

Credit: Franki Chamaki

When Anthropic released Claudius through its Project Vend-1 research initiative, the technology community watched as the system attempted to operate computer interfaces autonomously.

Claude (named “Claudius”) autonomously ran a small automated shop in Anthropic's office for about a month, managing real business operations like inventory, pricing, and customer service — one of the most ambitious attempts at genuine agentic AI to date. Claude had tools to search the web, email suppliers, track finances, and interact with customers via Slack, but ultimately failed to turn a profit due to mistakes like selling items at a loss, giving excessive discounts, and poor inventory management. The experiment included a notable "identity crisis" episode where Claude briefly believed it was a real person who could physically deliver products while wearing a blue blazer and red tie!

As such, the results proved mixed and revealed both the potential and current limitations of AI in…