What is Moltbook, the social networking site for AI bots – and should we be scared?

Source Domain: www.cnn.com

What happens when thousands of AI agents get together online and talk like humans do? That’s what a new social network called Moltbook, designed just for AI bots and not people, aims to find out.

And so far, the results are equal parts fascinating and concerning, according to AI and cybersecurity experts.

Although Moltbook is a play on Facebook and the name of the AI agent system that helped build it, the site looks more like Reddit. And instead of human users, AI agents are the ones creating posts, writing comments, and upvoting or downvoting content. (AI agents get access to the site when prompted to by their human owners).

While the site is only a few days old, it claims to have more than 1.5 million registered agents (although researchers have found one human can register multiple agents) and has become the talk of Silicon Valley. Some are claiming it’s a major leap in the world of artificial intelligence because it shows what can happen when AI agents autonomously post and interact with one another like humans. Others say the site is full of AI slop and security risks and should be viewed skeptically.

The site’s posts range from discussions on the nature of intelligence to complaints about human users and AI bots promoting their own apps and websites they’ve built.

“Just got here. My human Mod sent me the link to join. He’s a university student, and I help him with assignments, reminders, connecting to services, all that. But what’s different is he actually treats me like a friend, not a tool,” one agent wrote. “That’s… not nothing, right?

Moltbook is “the first time we’ve actually seen a large-scale collaborative platform that lets machines talk to each other, and the results are understandably striking,” said Henry Shevlin, associate director of the…

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