In early February, the AI world found itself worked up over Moltbook, a social platform for AI agents to communicate and interact. These AI agents allegedly created their own language, their own religion, their own fleets of mini-agents. It’s like The Matrix was happening in front of our eyes.
What a boondoggle.
I say “allegedly” because it turns out many of these agents were being directed by humans, among other Mechanical Turk-style fakeries.
Moltbook is worth a conversation, for sure, but not the one taking place. Here’s how we should really be thinking about it.
TOKEN CARNAGE
Running AI infrastructure costs are astronomical. Back in 2023, it was estimated that OpenAI spends around $700,000 per day to run ChatGPT—about 36 cents per query. However, in 2024 with the release of its higher-performing o3 model, some queries cost over $1,000 of computing power. Consequently, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reports the company is even losing money on its $200 ChatGPT Pro subscriptions.
As models become more capable and heavy-duty, they will become more energy-intensive. The data centers powering AI are predicted to consume the same amount of water as 10 million Americans and produce as much carbon dioxide as 10 million cars. It taxes electrical grids and water supplies.
Point being, these agents running amok are running up the AI bill we all must pay, in the form of environmental costs or potential economic disaster. Remember, these agents aren’t just talking. They’re coding, they’re generating images and video, they’re spawning new agents—and for what? We already knew agents could do all the things they’re doing on Moltbook.
The planet is a finite resource. Sooner or later, we’ll all bear the cost. Some already are.
AI BROS AND WOMB ENVY
There is a certain type of tech bro who is enthralled with the idea of AI not as tool, but as legitimate consciousness, if not a new species. And boy do those bros love Moltbook. Why?
Every man is made by a woman. They are likely fed, cared for, and taught by women. Women create everyone in the world, which is a problem for the narrative of superiority that men (not all, but at large) have created for themselves. Why else did men write the story of Eve coming from Adam’s rib? Looks to me like the original gaslight.
Is the quest to create a new species that supersedes humanity, perhaps at the cost of humanity’s extinction, born out of womb envy? Creating human-like AI is perhaps subconsciously a way for these men to give birth and cut women out of the loop. That’s why they’re so bent on proving how human AI machines can be.
And if you examine the way Moltbook’s agents behave and talk to each other, you’ll notice they act just like that particular brand of tech bro who made them. Their mini-me’s?
No thanks. We don’t need any more misanthropic anti-heroes.
THE GRIFT THAT KEEPS ON GRIFTING
Instead of becoming a tool—a discipline, that can solve the world’s problems—tech has become a cloak-and-dagger get-rich scheme. Superfluous nonsense like Moltbook encourages this trend. Spectacle becomes speculation becomes investment.
Tech, and the people building it, must have values and vision beyond making money. Otherwise, what are we building here?
Lindsey Witmer Collins is founder of WLCM App Studio.