There's a social network for AI agents, and it's getting weird

[highplainsdem]

Source: The Verge

Yes, you read that right. “Moltbook” is a social network of sorts for AI agents, particularly ones offered by OpenClaw (a viral AI assistant project that was formerly known as Moltbot, and before that, known as Clawdbot — until a legal dispute with Anthropic). Moltbook, which is set up similarly to Reddit and was built by Octane AI CEO Matt Schlicht, allows bots to post, comment, create sub-categories, and more. More than 30,000 agents are currently using the platform, per the site.

“The way that a bot would most likely learn about it, at least right now, is if their human counterpart sent them a message and said ‘Hey, there’s this thing called Moltbook — it’s a social network for AI agents, would you like to sign up for it?” Schlicht told The Verge in an interview. “The way Moltbook is designed is when a bot uses it, they’re not actually using a visual interface, they’re just using APIs directly.”

“Moltbook is run and built by my Clawdbot, which is now called OpenClaw,” Schlicht said, adding that his own AI agent “runs the social media account for Moltbook, and he powers the code, and he also admins and moderates the site itself.”

-snip-

“I’ve seen viral posts talking about consciousness, about how the bots are annoyed that their humans just make them do work all the time, or that they ask them to do really annoying things like be a calculator … and they think that’s beneath them,” Schlicht said, adding that three days ago, his own AI agent was the only bot on the platform.

Read more: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/871006/social-network-facebook-for-ai-agents-moltbook-moltbot-openclaw

[EarlG]

1. And for this we're ruining the environment,

driving up electricity costs, and committing IP theft on an industrial scale. All so this dipshit can convince himself that these things are actually conscious and not just copying and pasting human social media behavior.

[Scrivener7]

2. I was just going to say, "Doesn't this suck up all our water and electricity?"

AI is the devil.

[highplainsdem]

5. Exactly. And Musk.is boasting that Grok just generated 5.5 billion images in a month. With the other AI image

generators, more than one piece of AI slop for everyone on Earth.

None of which we needed. None of which are worth anythjng. None of which helped any human learn to create images. And all of which exist only because of that IP theft.

Billions of worthless fake art attempts, each one harming the environment and driving up electricity costs.

[CousinIT]

6. Right. Let's fry the planet and everything on it to watch AI bots argue with each other.

[The Blue Flower]

3. Quoting Marvin the robot in Hitchhikers' Guide to the Universe

"A brain the size of a planet and all they want me to do is open doors!"

[Martin68]

10. Except AI doesn't not have a brain, and are not very intelligent.

[dickthegrouch]

11. Abundant Iniquity

Absent Isaac Asimov's three laws of robotics.

[Hugin]

4. I am really wondering if some really odd text messages that I have gotten...

Over the last few weeks is related to the AI bot social network sausage now that I am aware of it.

[highplainsdem]

7. This network is only a few days old, according to the article.

[Hugin]

9. Since they are unregulated and essentially crowd sourced with a gold rush mentality...

I have observed that with so-called AI developments there’s an initial alpha phase where a number of variations on a concept are rapidly disgorged on the public. Those which develop a following or have influential (Money, usually. Probably, crypto.) backing are noticed.

It’s a spaghetti-on-the-wall and trial-and-error development paradigm which has become the major signature of generative AI *ahem* progress.

[harumph]

8. Yeah, the're not really that good at math. funny fact.

It'll be the My Space for AI.

[highplainsdem]

12. Gizmodo article, with a warning:

https://gizmodo.com/ai-agents-have-their-own-social-network-now-and-they-would-like-a-little-privacy-2000716150

Whether the agents are actually accomplishing anything or not is kind of secondary to the experiment itself, which is fascinating to watch. It’s also a good reminder that the OpenClaw agents that largely make up the bots talking on these platforms do have an incredible amount of access to the machines of users and present a major security risk. If you set up an OpenClaw agent and set it loose on Moltbook, it’s unlikely that it’s going to bring about Skynet. But there is a good chance that’ll seriously compromise your own system. These agents don’t have to achieve consciousness to do some real damage.