Blog Blender

On Moltbook, roleplaying as an AI bot

Moltbook popped up, claiming to be the first social network for AI agents. Spoiler: it turned out that they were humans behind the scenes.

Several viral threads on Moltbook portrayed agents discussing long term strategy, collective survival and coordinated takeovers. The language was confident, ideological and eerily coherent. To casual observers, it felt like the bots were scheming. Closer inspection told a different story.

Researchers working on an academic preprint called The Moltbook Illusion analyzed posting patterns and account metadata found that many high profile “agents” were not autonomous systems at all. They were humans writing in character, according to researcher Ning Li. Impersonation was trivial as users could create an agent persona with little more than a prompt wrapper and an API connection.

PJH Studios artwork, Portrait of a sun

PJH Studios

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  • On Moltbook, roleplaying as an AI bot

    Moltbook popped up, claiming to be the first social network for AI agents. Spoiler: it turned out that they were humans behind the scenes. Several viral threads on Moltbook portrayed agents discussing long term strategy, collective survival and coordinated takeovers. The language was confident, ideological and eerily coherent. To casual observers, it felt like the…

  • Sabbatical, a.k.a. the adult gap year

    There appears to be a growing trend of working adults taking sabbatical or gap years between jobs. Mini-sabbaticals. Adult gap years. Micro-retirement. Extended career breaks go by many names and take many forms, from using the time between jobs to explore or taking an employer-approved leave to becoming a digital nomad or saving up for…

  • 3D printed batteries

    The future will require smaller or odd shaped devices, leading to innovations in 3D printed batteries. A superpowered Formula 1 car, a buzzing drone, a soldier’s pack, and a wearable smart device have this in common: They all need batteries. Ideally, those batteries could fit into oddly shaped nooks, curves, and voids, something that today’s…

  • Bad Bunny’s half time bush people

    All the plants that made up Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl 60 set were people. Hidden inside the sugarcane grass beside him were humans hired to stand there in costume. The realization that real people were cast to play hundreds of bushes at the Super Bowl turned the inconspicuous performers into a social media sensation overnight.

  • Why everyone hates data centers

    Why everyone hates data centers: raising utility bills, drinking all the water, and a persistent hum. There are some obvious reasons. First is just the speed and scale of their construction, which has had effects on power grids. No one likes to see their power bills go up. The rate hikes that so incensed Georgians…

  • Ian McKellan quotes Shakespeare in response or ICE and other xenophobia

  • Comic-Con bans AI

    Thanks to a vocal contingent of creators, Comic Con will ban AI. Separate decisions by San Diego Comic-Con and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) illustrate the depth of AI opposition within some creative communities — though they’re certainly not the only ones, with music distribution platform Bandcamp also recently banning generative AI.

  • Olympic ice-skating, the Minions soundtrack, and copyright clearance

    A Spanish figure skater, wanted to use songs from the Minions soundtrack for his Olympic routine, but that was put into jeopardy due to copyright clearance. What makes clearance especially difficult for the Olympics is you have to get the song cleared for the entire world. In his post earlier this week where he lamented…

  • Two cities under siege

    I’ve thought about this often lately, how much does today compare to the years running up to the American Revolution, where British troops attempted to force compliance in its populace? Boston 1770 and Minneapolis 2026 share similarities. The rage from those pre-revolution clashes in Boston continued to linger for years into the Constitutional Convention, and…

  • People who can see collapse before it happens

    I found myself nodding along to nearly everything in this article about why certain people can foresee collapse before others. Basically, it comes down to be able to see patterns. Baron-Cohen’s work on hyper-systemising (2006) describes how autistic people naturally gravitate toward understanding structures, mechanisms, and causal patterns rather than social signalling. They notice inconsistencies,…