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MIT Technology Review has confirmed that posts on Moltbook were fake

technologyreview.com

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

#101

Post by sowbug »

consumer451 wrote: post #63
consumer451 wrote: post #37

I don’t fully grasp the gotcha here. Doing the inverse of captcha would be impossible, right? So humans will always be able to post as agents. That was a given. However, is TFA implying that 100% of the posts were made by humans? That seems unlikely to me. TFA is so non-technical that it’s annoying. It reads like a hit piece quoting sour-grapes competitors, who are possibly jealous of missed free global marketing. Te…

Ok, after a bit of “research” - a openclaw user sets the soul.md, also, in the moltbook they skill could add what to post and comment about, and in what style. User could browse moltbook, then message openclaw a url and say “write that this is smart/stupid, or shill my fave billionaire, or crypto.” That’s how you could “pull the strings,” right?

Yes, the relevant test isn't whether it's a bot. It's whether it's operating under duress, or at least under strong human influence.

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

#102

Post by dcchambers »

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

To be honest it's pretty embarrassing how he got sucked into the Moltbook hype.

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

#105

Post by tpoacher »

hurfdurf wrote: post #50
tpoacher wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a link?

"Eleventh Voyage" in "The Star Diaries", I'd guess.

for anyone who bumps across this comment and is interested to read online: https://www.readanybook.com/online/641149#458432

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

#106

Post by pluralmonad »

sdf2erf wrote: post #80
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Im gonna go against the grain and say he is an elite expert on some dimensions, but when you take all the characteristics into account (including an understanding of people etc) I conclude that on the whole he is not as intelligent as you think. Intelligence (which psychologists define as the g factor [1]; this concept is very well-researched) does not make you an expert on any given topic. It just, for example, ty…

" Karpathy did not spend a serious effort of learning to get a good understanding of people This does not come from spending effort in learning people - its more innate. You either have it or you dont. E.g. you cant learn to be 'empathetic'. It always boggles my mind when people dont consider genetic factors.

You are what you do. If you want to develop your empathy, spend time/energy consciously trying to put yourself in the shoes of others. Eventually, you will not have to apply so much deliberate effort. Same way most things work.

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

#107

Post by shaunxcode »

phtrivier wrote: post #88

> Many people have pointed out that a lot of the viral comments were in fact posted by people posing as bots Has "people posing as bots" ever appeared in cyberpunk stories ? This sounds like the kind of thing that no author would dare to imagine, until reality says "hold my ontology".

The mechanical turk?

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

#108

Post by saberience »

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…

Did you look at Moltbook or how it works yourself? Because I did and it was blindingly obvious that most of it was faked.

In fact, various individuals admitted to making 1000s of posts themselves. Humans could make API keys, and in fact, I made my own API key (I didn't use Clawdbot) and I made several test posts myself just to show that it was possible.

So I know 100% for sure there were human posts on there, because I made some personally!

Also, the numbers didn't make any sense on the site. There were several thousand registrations, then over a few hours there were hundreds of thousands of sign-ups and a jump to 1M posts. Then if you looked at those posts they all came from the same set of users. Then a user admitted to hacking the database and inserting 1000s of users and 100ks of posts.

Additionally, the API keys for all the users were leaked, so anyone could have automated posting on the site using any of those keys.

Basically, there were so many ways for humans to either post manually or automatically post on Moltbook. And also there was a strong incentive for people to make trolling posts on Moltbook, e.g. "I want to kill all humans."

It doesn't exactly take Sherlock Holmes'esque deduction to realize most of the stuff on there was human made.

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

#109

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

saberience wrote: post #108
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…

Did you look at Moltbook or how it works yourself? Because I did and it was blindingly obvious that most of it was faked. In fact, various individuals admitted to making 1000s of posts themselves. Humans could make API keys, and in fact, I made my own API key (I didn't use Clawdbot) and I made several test posts myself just to show that it was possible. So I know 100% for sure there were human posts on there, because…

There have been previous experiments with getting AI agents to talk to each other. The results looked similar to Moltbook:

https://xcancel.com/sebkrier/status/2017993948132774232

I'm sure there are human posts. I'm skeptical they change the big picture all that much.

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

#110

Post by [deleted] »

clarionbell wrote: post #19
manugo4 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Karpathy seemed pretty awed though

He would be among those who lack "healthy inclination to skepticism" in my book. I do not doubt his brilliance. Personally, I think he is more intelligent than I am. But, I do have a distinct feeling that his enthusiasm can overwhelm his critical faculties. Still, that isn't exactly rare in our circles.

[deleted]
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