• This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. • To get stories like this in your inbox first,sign up here. • Lots of influential people in tech last week were describing Moltbook, an online hangout populated by AI agents interacting with one another, as a glimpse into the future. • It appeared to show AI systems doing useful things for the humans that created them (one person used the platform to help him negotiate a deal on anew car). • Sure, it was flooded with crypto scams, and many of the posts were actuallywritten by people, butsomethingabout it pointed to a future of helpful AI, right? • The whole experiment reminded our senior editor for AI, Will Douglas Heaven, of something far less interesting: Pokémon.
Article Summaries:
- Moltbook, a social network where users deploy AI agents that chat and compete with one another, sparked a wave of hype that many tech figures likened to a future of helpful, autonomous bots. Senior editor Will Douglas Heaven compared the spectacle to a 2014 Pokémon‑style Twitch experiment, noting that the platform’s popularity stemmed more from entertainment than from demonstrating real AI progress. Analyst Jason Schloetzer described the site as a “spectator sport” for language models, pointing out that the agents were largely scripted to sound sentient. Heaven argues Moltbook lacks the coordination, shared goals, and memory needed for a truly useful hive mind, and sees it as a moment of internet play rather than a breakthrough.
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