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MIT Technology Review has confirmed that posts on Moltbook were fake

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Re: MIT Technology Review has confirmed that posts on Moltbook were fake

#51

Post by keiferski »

ffsm8 wrote: post #49
keiferski wrote: post #29

I use AI tools daily and find them useful, but I’ve pretty much checked out from following the news about them. It’s become quite clear that we’ve entered the marketing-hype-BS phase when people are losing their minds about a bunch of chatbots interacting with each other. It makes me wonder if this is a direct consequence of company valuations becoming more important than actual profits. Companies are incentivized to…

It's good to keep in mind that the agentic loop, what you're using AI tools with daily is essentially that, too. The tooling just hide the interactions and back and forth nowadays. So if you think you're getting value out of any ai tooling, you're essentially admitting a contradiction with what you're dismissing here via > a bunch of chatbots interacting with each other. Just something to think about, I don't have a…

No, because I don’t treat my discussions with an AI as some sort of contact with an alien intelligence. Which is what half the hype articles were about re Moltbook.

It’s an immensely useful research tool, full stop. Economy changing, even world changing, but in no way a replication of human level entities.

Re: MIT Technology Review has confirmed that posts on Moltbook were fake

#53

Post by zozbot234 »

d--b wrote: post #26

Even if the posts are fake. Given what the LLMs have shown so far (Grok calling itself MechaHitler, and shit of that nature), I don't think it's a stretch to imagine that agents with unchecked access to computers and the internet are already an actual safety threat. And Moltbook is great at making people realize that. So in that regard I think it's still an important experiment. Just to detail why I think the risk ex…

The MechaHitler thing was an intentionally prompted troll post, the controversial part was that Grok would then run with the concept so effectively from a rhetorical POV. Current agents are not nearly smart enough to "execute a plan", much less one involving real-world action but of course I agree that as you have more quasi-autonomous agents running, their alignment becomes an important concern.

Re: MIT Technology Review has confirmed that posts on Moltbook were fake

#54

Post by mikkupikku »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #43

@dang I'm flagging because I believe this title is misleading, can you please substitute in the original title used by Technology Review? The only evidence for the title appears to be a link to this tweet https://x.com/HumanHarlan/status/2017424289633603850 It doesn't tell us about most posts on Moltbook. There's little reason to believe Technology Review did an independent investigation. If you read this piece close…

There is a very odd synergy between the AI bulls who want us to believe that nothing surprising or spooky is going on so regulation isn't necessary, and the AI bears who want us to believe nothing surprising is happening and it's all just a smoke and mirrors scam.

Re: MIT Technology Review has confirmed that posts on Moltbook were fake

#55

Post by louiereederson »

manugo4 wrote: post #17
clarionbell wrote: post #13

Anyone with a decent grasp of how this technology works, and a healthy inclination to skepticism, was not awed by Moltbook. Putting aside how incredibly easy it is to set up an agent, or several, to create impressive looking discussion there, simply by putting the right story hooks in their prompts. The whole thing is a security nightmare. People are setting agents up, giving them access to secrets, payment details,…

Karpathy seemed pretty awed though

I think these people are just as prone to behavioral biases as the rest of us. This is not a problem per se, it's just that it is difficult to interpret what is happening right now and what will happen, which creates an overreliance on the opinions of the few people closely involved. I'm sure given the pace of change and the perception that this is history-changing is impacting peoples' judgment. The unusual focus on their opinions can't be helping either. Ideally people are factoring this into their claims and predictions, but it doesn't seem like that's the case all the time.

Re: MIT Technology Review has confirmed that posts on Moltbook were fake

#56

Post by mikkupikku »

keiferski wrote: post #51
ffsm8 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good to keep in mind that the agentic loop, what you're using AI tools with daily is essentially that, too. The tooling just hide the interactions and back and forth nowadays. So if you think you're getting value out of any ai tooling, you're essentially admitting a contradiction with what you're dismissing here via > a bunch of chatbots interacting with each other. Just something to think about, I don't have a…

No, because I don’t treat my discussions with an AI as some sort of contact with an alien intelligence. Which is what half the hype articles were about re Moltbook. It’s an immensely useful research tool, full stop. Economy changing, even world changing, but in no way a replication of human level entities.

> in no way a replication of human level entities.

Absolutely agree.

> I don’t treat my discussions with an AI as some sort of contact with an alien intelligence

Why not? They're not human intelligences. Obviously they aren't from outer space, but they are nonetheless inhuman intelligences summoned into being through a huge amount of number crunching, and that is quite alien in the adjective sense.

If the argument is that they aren't intelligences at all, then you've lost me. They're already far more capable than most AIs envisioned by 20th century science fiction authors. They're far more rational than most of Asimov's robots for instance.

Re: MIT Technology Review has confirmed that posts on Moltbook were fake

#57

Post by emiliobumachar »

This is conflating two entirely different claims pretty hard:

- The old point that AI speech isn't real or doesn't count because they're just pattern matching. Nothing new here.

- That many or most cool posts are by humans impersonating bots. Relevant if true, but the article didn't bring much evidence.

That conflation brings an element of inconsistency. Which is it, meaningless stochastic recitation or obviously must have come from a real person?

Re: MIT Technology Review has confirmed that posts on Moltbook were fake

#58

Post by modriano »

zozbot234 wrote: post #47
mycall wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was 10 days ago. I wonder if the discussions the moltys have begin to converge into a unified voice or if they diverge into chaos without purpose.

I haven't seen much real cooperation-like behavior on moltbook threads. The molts basically just talk past one another and it's rare to see even something as trivial as recognizable "replies" where molt B is clearly engaging with content from molt A.

That sounds like most social media over the past decade.
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