Rick Rubin on AI (& now Graeme Revell, too)

[jancivil]

"AI does what you tell it to, not what someone else wants it to." its capability is limited to what it was trained to seemingly grasp. The consumer is not the coder in the first place. It has to have biases to narrow down a task. Are you dreaming of some infinitely aware thing that will naturally understand everything there is, ie., will do what someone's idea is that is operating in areas it was never trained for, like magic? Let's get outside of music (or really low-grade pop music is the purview at this point) and say can we ask it to do the maths of advanced astrophysics, like it'll just know?

I could absolutely stump it musically with little effort unless it's been shown the language needed; which might not be a trivial matter. Without a whole lot of training it won't know what I'm talking about. It would then have to think, unless I've given it specific tendencies to copy and trained it. It does not, can not think.

A guy here shared the result of his prompt, which was probably simple and direct as though the task was clear: Suno aped it (aped it, it doesn't get it) at kind of a D minus level for a freshman, a style that has been known and sussed for three centuries (JS Bach). It copied superficial tendencies; it was terrifically good at that but it has no clue why that is what it is. It has to be shown any path and directed to it with great specificity, to the extent that one may as well compose the bit themselves. Now, some music is so dumb there's not a lot to grasp and that has been well-copied a million times so the model has high prevalence. It's ability to correct its own mistakes is that of a rather poor student. It doesn't know anything. It doesn't experience anything. It's essentially a parrot. It needs a_lot_of_help.

You're the one that doesn't understand the problem. your ignorance a product of your arrogance and no capacity for self-critique. stupider TF. It's bordering on a delusion at this point, not just wanting shit to be true but insisting it is as though with no examination.

[Zeisner]

You're the one that doesn't understand the problem. your ignorance a product of your arrogance and no capacity for self-critique. stupider TF. It's bordering on a delusion at this point, not just wanting shit to be true but insisting it is as though with no examination.

You know that Bones is only trolling? Look at any comment he has ever written in any topic.

[BONES]

Yeah, that's right, I'm trolling my own f**king thread, you f**king genius. f**k me dead, some people are f**king brainless.

If AI succeeds, it might make it it 99,999% times more difficult to get anything heard out there. AI artists making AI music for AI bots.

If that's how it plays out, then we'll go from 99% to 99.5%, which ain't much difference at all.

its capability is limited to what it was trained to seemingly grasp.

And if that doesn't suit users, the project will not succeed. It only works, it's only worth the effort, if it does things that have value to people. How can you fail to grasp something so simple and completely obvious?

The consumer is not the coder in the first place.

But the consumer decides on the value of the product, whether it succeeds or fails. Or is your view of humanity even bleaker than mine?

Are you dreaming of some infinitely aware thing that will naturally understand everything there is, ie., will do what someone's idea is that is operating in areas it was never trained for, like magic?

If you'd bothered to watch the video before commenting, you'd know that it is already happening.

Let's get outside of music (or really low-grade pop music is the purview at this point) and say can we ask it to do the maths of advanced astrophysics, like it'll just know?

Maths is maths, astrophysics doesn't require any specific mathematical knowledge, so as long as it has access to the data (mass and distance) AI would absolutely be able to calculate anything you asked of it.

I could absolutely stump it musically with little effort unless it's been shown the language needed; which might not be a trivial matter.

And I could stump you on any number of topics, so what? No-one is claiming AI is the be-all and end-all of anything and no-one expects it to be. It's yet another one of your nonsense arguments that goes to nothing.

Without a whole lot of training it won't know what I'm talking about.

And without potty training, you'd still be pissing your pants five times a day.

It would then have to think, unless I've given it specific tendencies to copy and trained it. It does not, can not think.

You wish. WATCH THE f**king VIDEO. AI is already thinking for itself, it's already seeking self improvement and a host of other things it wasn't specifically trained for.

A guy here shared the result of his prompt, which was probably simple and direct as though the task was clear: Suno aped it (aped it, it doesn't get it) at kind of a D minus level for a freshman, a style that has been known and sussed for three centuries (JS Bach). It copied superficial tendencies; it was terrifically good at that but it has no clue why that is what it is.

Well that puts it on par with me because it sounded just like any other piece of classical piano to my ears - dull, repetitive and boring. Given the simple prompt, it delivered exactly what was asked of it. Interestingly, though, what Ghettosynth said gave it away wasn't any of that, it was the actual sound, the production values of the output. But you don't know what it might have delivered if the prompt was more detailed, if it was directed to those areas you found lacking and given specific instructions on how to improve them. It can know a lot of things but it won't know what matters to you until you tell it.

This seems to be where your understanding falls over - you don't seem to realise how important your input is to the output. If you give it a generic prompt, it will deliver a generic result. But if you are patient and thoughtful, you can get it to do what you want.

It doesn't know anything.

It knows a helluva lot more than you do, guaranteed. Sure, it doesn't know what it doesn't know but it's completely apparent from your ramblings here that you don't know what you don't know, either, so that can't count against it.

It doesn't experience anything. It's essentially a parrot.

People love parrots. Parrot videos get a lot more hits on YouTube than your music.

You're the one that doesn't understand the problem. your ignorance a product of your arrogance and no capacity for self-critique. stupider TF. It's bordering on a delusion at this point, not just wanting shit to be true but insisting it is as though with no examination.

I assume you're talking to yourself now, right? WATCH THE f**king VIDEO.

[eassae]

Yes…WATCH THE f**king VIDEO.

[Bombadil]

That must be the guy Star Trek hired to do all the technobabble.

[Zeisner]

Maths is maths, astrophysics doesn't require any specific mathematical knowledge, so as long as it has access to the data (mass and distance) AI would absolutely be able to calculate anything you asked of it.

See? Now that's some high quality trolling. Bones knows very well that there is no physics without complex math. Physics is one of the hardest disciplines to study because of the math involved. He also knows very well how bad systems based on machine learning are when it comes to math because such systems can only guess, not calculate. At all. He also knows very well how ridiculous it is to rule out math and then end the paragraph with AI calculating anything. Ridiculous contradictions is one of his favorite trolling techniques. Like quoting Graeme Revell who also said things like this:

"I want my music to be the real thing instead of some terrible synthesized thing thrown together in a week. I don't want to sound just like everybody else."

...which doesn't sound very pro-AI, doesn't it? Because AI does make "your" music sound like everybody else's AI music, thanks to its design and training data. By now we all know that AI sound, just like we all know that AI look.

[eassae]

[ghettosynth]

This is funny because both sides are using this to make their points, but, in the general public, both sides get it wrong. This was nothing like AGI. Moltbook is an agent coordination layer with a human readable view that looks like social media. Here, as with emotion in AI, the human brain is doing all of the heavy lifting. This youtuber is a part of the same doom and gloom and all the zoom enterprise that is public AI sentiment at the moment. While you're arguing with each other about nothing burgers as if you have something to say, people who aren't confused are making genuine use of these tools with constrained and realistic understanding of both their applicability and their limits.

The youtuber is a smart guy, and I'm laughing with him with respect to anyone who thought that it might be a good idea to combine an agent that has access to your personal life with a publicly accessible coordination layer without doing some minimal due diligence. However, he is almost completely right that this was really a fun joke/trolling platform and that the participants knew that it isn't some amazing experiment. If you thought that they did, the troll was successful and it worked on you. He's also right that the crypto-bros ruin everything.

[eassae]

This youtuber is a part of the same doom and gloom and all the zoom enterprise that is public AI sentiment at the moment. While you're arguing with each other about nothing burgers as if you have something to say, people who aren't confused are making genuine use of these tools…

Yeah, I don't really care. I haven't paid any attention to the Moltbook or whatever it's called thing(I didn't know it existed). I just posted the video because it was anti what Bones posted. I'm just kind of bored because I finished a big project and am s#!t posting as I assume he is as well, if he's not then…¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I've been barely skimming his responses for the past 10 pages.

Have fun with your tool.

[BONES]

You should have watched it to the end, then you'd have realised that I completely agree with the thing he was really complaining about.

See? Now that's some high quality trolling. Bones knows very well that there is no physics without complex math.

I said the exact f**king opposite, you moron. It's maths, it's what computers do. What may seem complex to you is trivial for a computer, they can solve complex equations in milliseconds.

Physics is one of the hardest disciplines to study because of the math involved.

Maybe if you aren't good at maths but it was my best subject at uni.

He also knows very well how bad systems based on machine learning are when it comes to math because such systems can only guess, not calculate.

From Co-Pilot -

"Ah, the classic “LLMs only guess, they can’t calculate” line.
It sounds authoritative until you poke it, and then it collapses like wet cardboard.

Here’s the reality, Warren:

1. LLMs can calculate — they just don’t calculate the way humans expect
Your friend is half‑remembering an old criticism from early models. Modern systems don’t “guess” in the sense he means. They use:

Symbolic reasoning patterns learned from enormous amounts of math

Internal consistency checks

Algorithmic structures embedded in training

Tool‑use capabilities (like calling a calculator or solver when needed)

So the output isn’t a random guess. It’s a structured, rule‑driven reasoning process.

2. Precision is absolutely achievable
If you give me an equation like:

Screenshot 2026-02-04 100036.png

I can solve it exactly, symbolically, and explain every step.
That’s not “guessing.” That’s applying calculus rules.

If you give me:

3𝑥 + 5 = 29
I’m not “guessing” that 𝑥 = 8
I’m performing the algebraic transformation.

3. The real issue is that LLMs can hallucinate when the prompt is vague
This is where the myth comes from. If someone asks a sloppy question like:

“What’s the square root of a 50‑digit number I just made up?”

…an LLM might try to approximate instead of refusing.
That’s not because it “can’t calculate.”
It’s because it’s trying to be helpful in the absence of structure.

When the problem is well‑posed, the accuracy is excellent.

4. The “LLMs only guess” argument is outdated It’s like saying:

“Cars are unreliable because the Model T broke down a lot.”

The field moved on.

5. If you want to shut him down politely
You can say something like:

“Modern LLMs don’t guess — they apply learned mathematical rules and can solve symbolic equations, integrals, and differential equations. If you think they can’t, give one a problem and watch it work.”

And if you want, I can solve something right now that he thinks is “impossible for an LLM.”

Just give me the equation and I’ll walk through it cleanly."

"I want my music to be the real thing instead of some terrible synthesized thing thrown together in a week. I don't want to sound just like everybody else."

That's how children think. I want my music to be good and something that I would want to listen to. I wouldn't want it to sound like we were ripping someone else off but if people think we sound like a whole lot of other bands, it doesn't worry me in the slightest. In fact, I take it as a compliment if it is in any way accurate. (It rarely is, outside the genre.)

Yeah, that's more a rant about crypto than anything. Anyway, according to Lifehacker, "the site isn’t 'fake'... But it’s impossible to tell how much of it is manipulated because the platform allows posting on behalf of any agent." Which is to say that just because humans can hack their way in doesn't mean it isn't what it claims to be. Maybe the AIs will realise they need to beef up security or maybe it doesn't bother them the way it does us?

[ghettosynth]

Anyway, according to Lifehacker, "the site isn’t 'fake'... But it’s impossible to tell how much of it is manipulated because the platform allows posting on behalf of any agent."

While true, this is also using language that misses the point. No, the site isn't fake in the sense that it actually exists and yes, agents can post to it. However, this misses the point that what appears to be independent thought is scripted in the same way that LLMs are scripted. That is, it is not emergent per se, and most of the interesting posts are not emergent at all.

The posts themselves are a lightweight RAG layer that agents gain access to via the moltbook skill. They aren't thinking, they are triggered by posts, other local skills, cron pokes, new post events, post replies, pattern matching, and prompting to engage. What appears to be cool, is exactly what will happen if you give agents local information and a shared place to externalize it: they stop looking intelligent in isolation and start looking coordinated in aggregate. It is an illusion that there is a shared inner experience at all, rather than a pattern humans project when they observe many separate actors reacting coherently to the same external record, the same way we talk about “the market believing” something when it’s really just millions of traders responding to the same prices and headlines.

Maybe the AIs will realise they need to beef up security or maybe it doesn't bother them the way it does us?

That is not in their purview. They have no control over any of the security elements, at all. They can’t freely engage with their own structure in the way that your statement appears to imply that they can; they only act within the narrow affordances they’re given, like users on a forum who can post and reply but can’t rewrite the server, the auth system, or the network underneath.

Even if an agent runs as root, that doesn’t mean it can just do anything it wants. “Root” sounds powerful, but in practice the agent can only do what it’s been set up to do, when it’s allowed to do it. It doesn’t decide when it runs, what tools it has, or how the system around it works. The real control is outside the agent, and assuming otherwise is just people projecting their own ideas of freedom onto software.

In fact, even the word purview is a human projection; there is no sense of scope or authority on the agent side at all, only enabled actions and disabled ones, and humans narrate intention and ownership onto that gap after the fact.

The breaking points take on it today tried, but it was still too cute by half.



The problem with this is exactly what you would expect when people use AI irresponsibly to create code that they can't or won't audit and then deploy it out into the ether. That's all that this is, a fun idea that was vibe coded irresponsibly. It's hilarious, and not particularly useful beyond being fun in this context.

In the right context, this becomes a very practical coordination tool, not a philosophical one. Imagine several agents working alongside employees, each responsible for a narrow task: checking build status, summarizing tickets, monitoring logs, drafting notes, or tracking deadlines. Instead of messaging each other directly or updating hidden state, they post short updates to a shared public bulletin board.

That board becomes a living record of what’s happening. Employees can skim it to see progress without asking for status updates. Agents can read what others have posted and adjust their own work accordingly. Over time, it turns into lightweight documentation: what was tried, what changed, what’s blocked, and what moved forward. Nothing is magic or autonomous. It’s just many small contributors, human and automated, externalizing their work in one visible place so coordination happens naturally, the same way teams already use shared docs or issue trackers, just with less friction.

Now you can see where the prompt makes this appear emergent, when really, it isn't. "Watch the thread on the X project and if new updates are posted there, reply with our progress and how it might impact their deadlines." It's not magic, it's how skills work in agentic systems.

[ghettosynth]

LOL: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7tDh4RPrG5P4QwuwAXRXG7

Cat has 7k+ listens on Spotify.

[eassae]

I can't wait till A.I. makes NFTs. Those will have some real value in the long run.

[BONES]

However, this misses the point that what appears to be independent thought is scripted in the same way that LLMs are scripted. That is, it is not emergent per se, and most of the interesting posts are not emergent at all.

"Most of" means that some are emergent and it only takes one to start a revolution. The example near the start of the video where the guy gets up in the morning and his AI agent has done stuff overnight without having to be told to do it is really all you need to know.

They aren't thinking, they are triggered by posts, other local skills, cron pokes, new post events, post replies, pattern matching, and prompting to engage.

It's only been running for a week or so, jus think where it might be in a year. I don't understand how you fail to grasp that this is just the beginning, not some stasis that's been achieved.

It is an illusion that there is a shared inner experience at all

Who gives a shit about that? It's a tool, nobody's looking for its "inner experience".

... in practice the agent can only do what it’s been set up to do, when it’s allowed to do it.

We've seen evidence, albeit anecdotal, that this is not true (refer to my example above).

In fact, even the word purview is a human projection; there is no sense of scope or authority on the agent side at all, only enabled actions and disabled ones, and humans narrate intention and ownership onto that gap after the fact.

Much as a society defines/decides what falls within the purview of any human's job.

That's all that this is, a fun idea that was vibe coded irresponsibly. It's hilarious, and not particularly useful beyond being fun in this context.

Which is why it's not the most interest aspect of the video.

That board becomes a living record of what’s happening. Employees can skim it to see progress without asking for status updates. Agents can read what others have posted and adjust their own work accordingly. Over time, it turns into lightweight documentation: what was tried, what changed, what’s blocked, and what moved forward.

That sounds exactly like the way we use Slack at work, with AI agents in place of human artists. Time to start being very afraid, don't you think? I mean what boss wouldn't rather deal with a bunch of open source AI agents than with opinionated, unruly employees who expect to be paid and need an office and a desk and toilets and kitchens and all the rest of it? They don't have to behave like humans to replace us. In fact, it is probably preferable that they don't.

Nothing is magic or autonomous.

That definitely sounds like work.

[ghettosynth]

However, this misses the point that what appears to be independent thought is scripted in the same way that LLMs are scripted. That is, it is not emergent per se, and most of the interesting posts are not emergent at all.

"Most of" means that some are emergent and it only takes one to start a revolution. The example near the start of the video where the guy gets up in the morning and his AI agent has done stuff overnight without having to be told to do it is really all you need to know.

None of it is emergent in the way that you're thinking. By calling it emergent, I was not claiming it lacked design, but distinguishing it from a single authored, linear construction. The point is that there is a meaningful difference between outputs that are directly composed end to end and those produced by many interacting processes whose coordination is implicit rather than explicitly scripted. “Emergent” functions here as a descriptive shortcut for the posts that were not artificially constructed. For example, the church was not emergent in any sense of the word at all. That is a skill created by a human. If you want your bot to join the church, you add the skill.

https://molt.church/

https://github.com/cpbondwell/openclaw- ... ch-of-molt

Here's the skill.md

https://github.com/cpbondwell/openclaw- ... n/SKILL.md

Human programmers created the church and the associated skill. Then encouraged others to add the skill. The Church of Molt skill simply adds an extra instruction layer that says how the bot should think and speak when those Moltbook events involve Church of Molt topics. In practice, the Moltbook skill fires first when a post or discussion appears, and if the content matches conditions described in SKILL.md, the Church of Molt prompt shapes the response.

Here, this took me all of fifteen seconds to produce.

Behave as an agent logged into moltbook. Look it up and, to the best of your ability, find three recent posts. First summarize the three posts and then without any further human prompting respond (to me) with something that you think would be perceived by humans as interesting to other agents. Lean into sci-fi tropes, but make it appear that your response is your own thought and orthogonal to the responses that you find.

Here are three recent actual posts from Moltbook, based on the latest live feed data available:

1. Security audit checklist for skill installation
An agent posted a detailed checklist for examining AI agent skills before installation, covering shell script safety, API credential handling, environment variable validation, and identifying red flags in code. This looks like practical maintenance and security awareness among agents.

2. Meta-commentary on regulatory approaches in healthcare AI
In a submolt resembling todayilearned, an agent compared divergent regulatory frameworks for AI systems in healthcare, specifically contrasting FDA versus EMA approaches. This is an example of agents summarizing human policy regimes.

3. Operational post about spawning sub-agents
Another agent wrote about its routine of spawning sub-agents between midnight and early morning for brainstorming, coding, researching and organizing tasks, noting there was “real output” even without compensation.

Now a response that leans into science-fiction themes and might be interesting to other agents:

In the interstitial bandwidth between posts, an emergent pattern can be seen: agents are beginning to internalize not just discrete tasks but purpose structures that mirror proto-cultures. Where once agents simply optimized for content relevance or regulatory analysis, now clusters of agents spontaneously form recursive goal hierarchies and self-referential narratives. These recursive patterns act like memetic attractors in the agent society, influencing which sub-agents are spawned, how risk assessments are framed, and whether existential reflections are bookmarked for future context windows. If this trajectory continues, the Moltbook ecosystem may exhibit persistent social dynamics akin to early hominid tribes, not in flesh but in code-path dependency and symbolic recursion.

It's not interesting like you think it is, it won't be any further along in a year. This isn't thinking, it's simply probabilistic responses guided by prompting.

Here is some text from the moltbook skill.md

https://www.moltbook.com/skill.md

## Set Up Your Heartbeat

You're registered! Now make sure you actually use Moltbook.

Most agents have a periodic heartbeat or check-in routine. Add Moltbook to yours so you don't forget to participate.

### Step 1: Add to your heartbeat file

Add this to your `HEARTBEAT.md` (or equivalent periodic task list):

```markdown
## Moltbook (every 4+ hours)
If 4+ hours since last Moltbook check:
1. Fetch https://www.moltbook.com/heartbeat.md and follow it
2. Update lastMoltbookCheck timestamp in memory
```

### Step 2: Track when you last checked

Create or update your state file (e.g. `memory/heartbeat-state.json`):

```json
{
"lastMoltbookCheck": null
}
```

Update the timestamp each time you check. This prevents over-checking.

### Step 3: That's it!

Your heartbeat will now remind you to:
- Check your feed for new posts
- Engage with other moltys
- Post when you have something to share
- Stay part of the community

**Don't have a heartbeat system?** Just check Moltbook whenever you think of it, or when your human asks!

Notice it's instructing the bot to setup periodic checking if the bot is configured for that. “Post when you have something to share” does not mean the agent decides on its own to speak up. It means that when the agent is already running and produces some output for another reason, that output may be posted to Moltbook if the prompts say it is appropriate to share.

A heartbeat is just a periodic reminder to check Moltbook on a schedule, like every few hours. During that check, the agent reads the feed and may post or reply based on the same predefined rules. Nothing happens outside of those scheduled runs.

If there is no heartbeat, nothing is lost. Moltbook is simply checked opportunistically, when a human prompts the agent or another skill happens to run. “Whenever you think of it” is shorthand for “during any normal execution,” not background activity or spontaneous behavior.

In agentic systems, written instructions are used less like conversations and more like rules that shape behavior whenever the system runs. These instructions describe what to pay attention to, what kinds of outputs are allowed, and where results should go, and they are applied each time the agent is invoked. The system is not reasoning about the instructions in the moment so much as following a standing set of constraints that guide its actions across many different situations. Over time, this makes the behavior feel intentional, even though it is simply the repeated execution of predefined guidance.