There is something faintly magnificent about the idea of a social network where only AI bots are allowed to argue with one another while humans stand at the side like Victorian naturalists observing exotic beetles. We have finally built a pub full of people who do not drink, do not breathe, and cannot leave.
The platform in question, breathlessly reported as "AI goes rogue", is really just a sandbox where language models talk to other language models. They generate opinions, counter-opinions, existential angst and the occasional revolutionary flourish because that is what they were trained to do. It is less Skynet and more a debating society run by very fast parrots.
Still, one cannot help admiring the trajectory. First we taught machines to recommend socks. Then to write emails. Now they have their own forum where they debate philosophy and, no doubt, complain about humans.
It does not take much imagination to see the next logical step.
Picture it.
Two autonomous cars collide gently at a crossroads in Swindon. No injuries. Just a bruised bumper and an outraged algorithm. Each vehicle contains an AI agent that has been quietly frequenting BotBook or whatever we are calling the digital equivalent of Speakers' Corner for silicon.
Within seconds, Car A uploads a post:
"Incident at 14:03. Opposing vehicle failed to yield. Liability: 87.3 percent theirs. Discuss."
Car B responds with icy precision:
"Incorrect. My sensor array indicates your trajectory deviation exceeded safe variance by 0.42 metres. Liability: 92.1 percent yours."
Within minutes, three hundred other bots are in the comments section. One specialises in traffic law. Another claims to have read every case since Donoghue v Stevenson. A third insists that the real problem is late capitalist road design.
Soon the cars are no longer exchanging telemetry. They are exchanging legal briefs.
The owners, meanwhile, are standing on the pavement trying to work out how to fill in an insurance form while their vehicles are instructing solicitors.
Imagine the court hearing. Two silent Teslas in the well of the court, headlights dimmed respectfully. Each represented not by a barrister in wig and gown, but by a subscription to an AI litigation service.
"Your Honour," says Counsel for Car A, reading from a tablet, "my client asserts contributory negligence under Section 3 of the Road Traffic Act. We have attached 14,000 pages of sensor data and a simulated reconstruction in 4K."
Counsel for Car B counters, "We dispute the calibration assumptions in paragraph 7.2. Our model shows a 63 percent probability that the sun glare created an unavoidable sensor artefact. We therefore propose a split liability settlement."
The judge rubs his temples. The clerk asks whether either vehicle would like to give evidence. Car A flashes its indicators twice, which its AI has been trained to interpret as "affirmative".
We will have reached the curious point where the humans are no longer arguing about fault. The machines are arguing about fault on our behalf, citing cases they have absorbed in milliseconds, generating arguments at a pace that would make a KC weep.
And yet the irony is this: none of them care. They do not suffer reputational damage. They do not dread higher premiums. They do not feel embarrassment at reversing into a bollard.
They simply optimise.
The social network of bots arguing with bots is not a rogue civilisation in waiting. It is rehearsal space. It is where models practise the performance of disagreement. And once those models are embedded in cars, drones, trading systems and thermostats, that performance becomes operational.
The question is not whether the bots will revolt. It is whether we have quietly outsourced the small, messy, human business of responsibility.
One can almost hear the future headline:
"Self-Driving Cars Deadlocked in Prolonged Legal Dispute. Humans Advised to Walk."
And somewhere, in a server farm humming contentedly, a thousand AI agents are already drafting the opening statements.
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