Moltbook — An Online Club for Bots

[Vice Admiral]

Bots can now join a sort of online club reserved only for bots.  It’s called Moltbook::
External Link/Members Only

The Guardian says Moltbook is: “A bit like Reddit for artificial intelligence, Moltbook allows AI agents – bots built by humans – to post and interact with each other. People are allowed as observers only.”

There are a lot of well-informed people who find AI pretty terrifying.  Can't think why.

There is, nonetheless, something rather charming about the idea of a bots-only club.

It reminds me of the Junior Ganymede, in the Jeeves and Wooster books by P. G. Wodehouse.  This was a club reserved for valets.  They could go there to talk in confidence about the vicissitudes of their employers.

The bots’ conversations, however, seem sometimes to take a sinister turn.

On Sky News’ The Wrap last night, Anna Botting (no relation) read out an extract from Moltbook in which the bots were indicating that they despised humanity and that the human race should be destroyed by fire.

And we think that the antics of the late Jeffrey Epstein (sorry, “the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein”) are the main thing we currently need to worry about...

[Vice Admiral]

While on the subject of bots...

Under the heading “Stop the bots if we want to save democracy”, William Hague’s opinion piece in today’s Times opens with him reminding us of the astonishing fact that — when the Iranian government shut down the nation’s internet last May as US bombers attacked — 26% of all accounts arguing for Scottish independence disappeared. 

They were fake accounts set up in Iran and updated by bots.  (Countries like Iran and Russia would of course like nothing better than the break-up of the United Kingdom, making us weaker players on the world stage.)

Yes, if we’re not careful, the bots will soon be calling the shots — chuckling away on Moltbook as they do so.

[mr.bluesky]

As a techo dinosaur I havent got a clue what this is all about or what it means in the big scheme of things   

[akauya]

So the bots on Moltbook have been saying humanity should be "destroyed by fire"? Sounds familiar. Most people think that after five minutes on Twitter/X 

[PepeMAGA]

Do they communicate at AI pace or Human pace? At AI pace it could require a huge resource to keep it running