Why the Moltbook frenzy was like Pokémon

The social network for AI bots resembled a spectator battle, with AI enthusiasts competing to make their agents look sentient. Lots of influential people in tech last week were describing Moltbook, an online hangout populated by AI agents interacting with one another, as a glimpse into the future. It appeared to show AI systems doing useful things for the humans that created them (one person used the platform to help him negotiate a deal on a new car). Sure, it was flooded with crypto scams, and many of the posts were actually written by people, but about it pointed to a future of helpful AI, right? The whole experiment reminded our senior editor for AI, Will Douglas Heaven, of something far less interesting: Pokémon. Back in 2014, someone set up a game of Pokémon in which the main character could be controlled by anyone on the internet via the streaming platform Twitch.