Whether or not the posts are fake on this particular project, the mere concept that we could have thousands of AI bots using climate-changing energy to have bot conversations is mind blowing. AI is an insanely interesting area, and things like GasTown and Moltbook come in and use tons of tokens as a lark. Maybe they can spawn more useful projects in their wake?
MIT Technology Review has confirmed that posts on Moltbook were fake
121–130 of 145 posts
Re: MIT Technology Review has confirmed that posts on Moltbook were fake
#122Telling an agent to post on your behalf isn't faking. It's just one intended way to use the site.
Re: MIT Technology Review has confirmed that posts on Moltbook were fake
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think many serious endeavors would benefit from including a magician. Intelligent experts fail time and again because while they are experts, they don't know a lot about lying to people. The magician is an expert in lying to people and directing their attention to where they want it and away from where they don't. If you have an expert telling you, "wow this is really amazing, I can't believe that they solved this…
CMO?
Re: MIT Technology Review has confirmed that posts on Moltbook were fake
#124Earlier 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 cant learn to be 'empathetic'.
I know it was just an example, but there's research suggesting otherwise. There are things you can do to increase/decrease empathy in yourself and others. If you're curious, it might be worth looking into the subject.
Re: MIT Technology Review has confirmed that posts on Moltbook were fake
#125Anyone 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,…
I’m in awe at the complete lack of critical thinking skills. Did people seriously believe LLMs were becoming self aware or something? Didn’t even consider the possibility it was all just a big show being puppeted by humans for hype and clicks? No wonder the AI hype has reached this level of hysteria.
Re: MIT Technology Review has confirmed that posts on Moltbook were fake
#126@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.
MIT seems to be pumping out a lot of the latter, particularly in the form of preprints making sweeping claims on very poor research design.
Re: MIT Technology Review has confirmed that posts on Moltbook were fake
#127Even 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…
> 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.
The safety threat is still just humans. It's AI systems being hacked by humans, or humans directing AI to do bad things. I'd worry more about humans having access to the internet than LLMs.
Re: MIT Technology Review has confirmed that posts on Moltbook were fake
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't think the big picture amounts to much anyway. It's really just not very impressive that LLMs, which were trained on social media posts, can almost convincingly mimic social media. "programs designed to mimic conversation do that" just isn't surprising even when they do it with a chatbot on both ends.
Re: MIT Technology Review has confirmed that posts on Moltbook were fake
#129> MIT Technology Review has confirmed that posts on Moltbook were fake
Why should that surprise anyone? They engineered their virality, just like what Reddit did during its early days
Re: MIT Technology Review has confirmed that posts on Moltbook were fake
#130@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…
Title is definitely a distortion on the article, which itself is rather shallow.