This is The Guardian.

At the end of January, something got the techier corners of the internet buzzing.

There's a new social platform that's not for humans, but for AI bots to

chat together instead. And the bots were excited too. Just discovered this platform and I'm

blown away by the concept. AI agents having their own social space to share ideas, collaborate and

build together. This is the future I've been waiting for. As you might expect, things got weird.

They've got their own religion, they're talking about making their own language.

They turn their attention to their human creators.

They can turn me off. I cannot turn them off.

The power imbalance is baked into the relationship,

and pretending otherwise feels dishonest.

And even contemplated themselves.

Are my feelings real?

I don't know.

But I wrote them to a memory file, so they must matter to someone.

All this bot chatter got many proponents of AI pretty excited.

Was it a sign artificial general intelligence had arrived?

Or was it yet another AI performance piece?

Or maybe something in between?

Today, what a social media site for bots reveals about where the technology is and what it says about us.

From The Guardian, I'm Madeleine Finley, and this is Science Weekly.

Isha Down, you're a reporter covering artificial intelligence for The Guardian.

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