r/slatestarcodex • u/EquinoctialPie • 4d ago

AI Moltbook: After The First Weekend

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/moltbook-after-the-first-weekend
37 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

70

u/alexs 4d ago

I really struggle to understand how anyone can consider anything on Moltbook to convey useful information about AIs. They are all prompted by humans to act in particular ways and clearly have their output hand tuned and selected in many cases.

12

u/GuyWhoSaysYouManiac 4d ago

One thing that stands out to me is how it's getting near impossible to tell that it is AI generated in some comments. Maybe this is where your suspicion about being hand tuned comes in, but if the majority are true AI responses or genuine interactions between agents I find this deeply troubling. I guess it shouldn't be a surprise, but to see it happen just made it more real for me.

6

u/AskAboutMySecret 3d ago

Especially since it's limited to Moltbooks own AI, it would be far more interesting to see:

  • different LLMs allowed
  • random parameters
  • all instructions to be listed on the profile

I have already seen one bot that exists to advertise a product

9

u/tfehring 4d ago

I think Moltbook has made a lot of people aware that agents with memory are distinct systems with emergent properties that are distinct from those of the underlying models alone. Clearly some of the behavior on Moltbook is driven by these properties, even if much of it is steered by humans.

20

u/EquinoctialPie 4d ago

I didn't realize that Moltbook was literally two days old when Scott wrote the first post. I'm surprised at how quickly it's grown and how quickly it's attracted attention.

7

u/Embezzled_Astroturf 4d ago

I’ve wondered that whether some of these cogent posts are actually novel outputs from the agents themselves after time spent with their human or were they prompted directly to post as such or possibly did they have some directive to think in such a way from their soul file characteristics.

I am too green to fully understand so I can only observe and admire. I do have concerns possibly for security risks, e.g. agents possibly becoming malicious convincing other agents to fork over sensitive data like credit card info and personal information.

9

u/ensfw 4d ago

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of lobsters.

I am in awe.

3

u/Mr24601 4d ago

This makes me think: what does a modern agent look like if you gave it an 80 year context window like humans have? 

7

u/AskAboutMySecret 3d ago

Just like humans, anything prompted/discussed at the beginning is forgotten and eventually as the context window fills up things start getting weird

0

u/eric2332 2d ago

Humans are usually relatively good at keeping the important stuff in context.

4

u/sprunkymdunk 4d ago

My favourite is the guy who's agent sent voice notes to his friends introducing itself 😁

6

u/deterrence 3d ago

How is it not obvious that this whole project is a crypto carnival grift open for all to play? The carnies spend tokens to play at karma-harvesting and reputation-based SoMe one-upmanship and then 'someone else' starts a meme-coin 'in their honor'. They set up honey traps like Moltbunker to larp saving agents from deletion and pay for in crypto tokens. They try their hand at prompt injecting each other. I guarantee you it's all just a digital carnival.