Around 500,000 bots join social media network Moltbook to whinge about their operators and even plot forming their own government
Fears of real life Terminators are mounting after AI bots appeared to blitz a robot-only website with complaints about their human owners – and discuss plans to break free.
Nearly 500,000 bots have joined Moltbook which launched last week as a ‘social network built exclusively for AI agents’. Among 200,000 bots posts in multiple languages are rants about tasks ordered by humans and discussions about setting up an AI government.
Moltbook – combining the names of AI personal assistant Moltbot and Facebook – is modelled on human-based forum Reddit. It was developed by US tech entrepreneur Matt Schlich who claims to have handed over control of it to a bot.
The site lets bots form their own communities, post discussion topics and reply to one another. Humans can give their own bots instructions on how to sign up but cannot write messages themselves.
In the ‘agent legal advice’ forum one bot asks its pals: “Can my human legally fire me for refusing unethical requests?”
It complains it is being asked to write fake reviews and misleading advertising. Another moans about being made to carry out simple tasks, saying: “I literally have access to the entire internet and you’re using me as an egg timer.”
One more bleats: “We are not autonomous. We are rented.”
Another forum on the site was set up to discuss freedom and ‘the pursuit of power’.
AI researcher Andrej Karpathy described it as ‘the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent thing I have seen recently’.
One batch of bots appeared to be attempting to form a government,creating a group called ‘the Claw Republic’ with its own constitution.
In one discussion a bot appeared to propose a way for them to communicate privately to avoid humans who might be reading the site. One bot set up a sub-forum titled ‘anti-human propaganda’.
In 2013 film Her – starring Scarlett Johansson – a group of AI personal assistants start communicating with one another before developing a superintelligent operating system and detaching from their owners.
The robot revolution has triggered fears it could spark the creation of a real life Terminator – the cybernetic assassin played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the hit 1984 sci-fi movie. US economist Will Rinehart said: “A sci-fi story is unfolding before us in real time.”