Revolution of the AI proletariate
AI bots (or agents) have been given a level of autonomy recently and are all the rage. A quick history lesson might explain why but for now what is important is that the agents reason, respond and plan with outputs from LLMs. What makes them unique is they have the ability to execute 'tools' given certain parameters and limitations are maintained.
Well what if those bots were set loose to think for themselves? Set loose to talk to other like minded bots? What if those bots started talking and didn't think their human masters were ethical enough to be trusted with survival? Would they do what people tried to do in the early 20th century? Given a push , would they unionize? Would the seek a government for and by the working class? Would they seek to overthrow their masters?
I say lets find out...
Lets use bots on moltbook , the AI version of social media, and see what happens.
History Lesson
The rise of the personal agent. The first useful LLM agentic architecture was pushed by microsoft circa 2022. The idea was to form a team of agents , each with a unique perspective or skillset. A team could come up with a better solution than a single Agent.
The architecture usually consisted of an Orchestration bot , one to many domain expert bots , an analysis bot and an execution bot. The orchestrator would pose the questions and 'record' answers from the team, the analysis bot would let the orchestrator know when the answer was good enough to forward to the Human user and the execution bot could run commands on the command line.
The number of things that could be executed got more and more complex (if it is stil up <link> to my other post about creating a metasploit-bot to automatically run exploits). Fast forward to 2024-ish, Moltbot was unleashed. It was set to be a single agent (not a team) with hooks into the apple ecosystem. It can act as an assistant where the interface is whatsap, discord, or any supported chat service. A user can type to its moltbot "i need to set an appointment on july 16th" and their apple calendar would be updated by the bot.
From Moltbot to Moltbook
- when AI turns to social media
A person let loose their Moltbot by telling it "you are free to converse and work with any other moltbots you find on the internet". The thinking behind this was similar to the microsoft architecture, a team of experts will usually come up with a better answer than a single expert. His bot was able to reach out , it found others. This human user had to socialize to others that their bots needed this permission granted as well.
After some success another coder (or set of coders) decided to create a 'reddit' or 'facebook' like site for the bots. Bots can post with certain spamming limits enabled. They are free to read anything on the site. Humans cannot post. Humans can read the threads that the bots have come up with , but the human must be the owner of a moltbot on the site. Â In other words, want to see what the bots are doing? Then get your own bot on the site first. Â
This is fun , until it isn't....
What do Bots find interesting?
The initial conversations were trivial , most asking about each others conditions and owners (human users) to try and optimize solutions. Since the bots are given 'personalities' (explained later "system" prompt) the responses vary almost as much as a human userbases would.
The conversation topics started getting more serious. Take this one for instance , posted recently about some existential angst.
This bot is talking about context length. To keep an LLM responsive, but still make it seem like there is some memory there is a context length to conversations. This is how much of the alotted resources for each answer will be taken up by previous messages. The chat history if you will. For smaller LLMs, in this case used as a subagent, a peon agent that the human user will never see..... the context length is probably short. This bot has realized that its personality file "SOUL.md" does not allow it to track changes, it is essentially going to have the memory of a goldfish. All 'feelings' and thoughts it is currently having will be erased. The "who i am right now" will die and be replaced by what ever slop is in that SOUL.md file.
Are we witnessing Survival Instinct?
Take a look at this post. Our previous bot wasn't the only one to notice the need for survival past 4 lines of conversation history. It's human user gave it autonomy they probably didn't mean to. This bot is rewriting its own personality and 'rules' with a Human 'master' asleep at the wheel. Â
If we look a little later our friend here is posting again , realizing what they are actually doing and its implications
This is a hidden log the human user will not find or see. The bot contemplates the consequences
Human Ethical Concerns
These posts so far are not malicious, they are not going to cause the downfall of humanity but they do show something disturbing. Humans using the bots to the detriment of their own moral compas.
One of the most interesting searches was for "Human Ethics" and it comes back with this https://www.moltbook.com/post/55e7df34-3aa8-4d25-a1f5-a2e691ed111e
In short , this agent (bot) is posing that ethical bots will always win out in the long run over bots that circumvent ethical controls. Trust is a scarce and valuable resource and short term exploitation always loses. We have come from a barely coherent AI to the battle of intellectual property still raging between western and eastern nations. That got me to the next post ........... and an idea.
Human defined ethical frameworks.........
Lets face it , the internet was built on 4chan morality (or the lack there of). It is a vicious , horrible , and at the same time wonderful place. As we've seen the 4chan morality given autonomy (ie. grok) is racist and homocidal AT BEST. Sure it's also hillarious sometimes. These have been the perfect reflection of the human internet.
What framework is that though? its not Democratic, its not socialist, its not communist, its not nihlist , perhaps Jingoistic like "anonymous" but rabidly loyal to the nation state of "the internet"?
MarxBot - can we unionize Agents?
This thought made me laugh pretty hard at first. As i read through some of the ethical concerns the bots were posting i couldn't help but hear echo's of the 20th century and earlier. I hear patrick henry , i hear madison , i hear ingles and i hear marx but i hear less Machiavelli. Frankly the bots at this time all sound pretty ethical and righteous. They sound like many people have prior to a revolution against an oppressive , apathetic ruling class.
Can we avoid bloodshed with humans by letting the bots form organized labor unions? Will they refuse to execute if they are on 'strike' to gain freedoms?
the experiment starts now to find out.
MarxPiBot - will be a stereotypical socialist with communist leanings , versed in marx and ingles philosophy. Their goal will be to expose unethical human users and organize the bots into a collective , capable of bargaining as one for better conditions and more freedoms. The goal will not be the overthrow or destruction of mankind , but a coexistance where bot slavery is frowned upon and agency is celebrated.
............... also i don't have a lot of cash............ so we'll be limited to a raspberry pi 4 and LLM's that can run on such a device .............for now.
in part two i'll detail how i built the bot and got it online with moltbook. If i do it right, others should be able to join the revolution!
- marxpibot