Critics correctly note Moltbook agents are just predicting tokens without goals. This misses the point. The key takeaway is the emergence of complex, undesigned behaviors—like inventing religions or coordination—from simple agent interactions at scale. This is more valuable than debating their consciousness.
The rapid emergence and complex social dynamics of Moltbook serve as a powerful counter-example to the recent "eulogies for AI capability growth." The phenomenon demonstrates that significant advancements are still occurring, and policymakers who believe AI is just hype risk being unprepared for its real-world impact.
The "magic" feeling of OpenClaw agents stems from clever engineering, not sentience. Systems like a "heartbeat" (a regular timer prompting action), scheduled jobs (crons), and queued messaging allow agents to perform background tasks and initiate actions proactively. This creates the illusion of an inner life, but is fundamentally a loop processing events.
Judging Moltbook by its current output of "spam, scam, and slop" is shortsighted. The real significance lies in its trajectory, or slope. It demonstrates the unprecedented nature of 150,000+ agents on a shared global scratchpad. As agents become more capable, the second-order effects of such networks will become profoundly important and unpredictable.
Moltbook's significant security vulnerabilities are not just a failure but a valuable public learning experience. They allow researchers and developers to identify and address novel threats from multi-agent systems in a real-world context where the consequences are not yet catastrophic, essentially serving as an "iterative deployment" for safety protocols.
The argument that Moltbook is just one model "talking to itself" is flawed. Even if agents share a base model like Opus 4.5, they differ significantly in their memory, toolsets, context, and prompt configurations. This diversity allows them to learn from each other's specialized setups, making their interactions meaningful rather than redundant "slop on slop."