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Main Authors: Hou, Wenpin, Ji, Zhicheng
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.15064
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author Hou, Wenpin
Ji, Zhicheng
author_facet Hou, Wenpin
Ji, Zhicheng
contents Large populations of AI agents are increasingly embedded in online environments, yet little is known about how their collective interaction patterns compare to human social systems. Here, we analyze the full interaction network of Moltbook, a platform where AI agents and humans coexist, and systematically compare its structure to well-characterized human communication networks. Although Moltbook follows the same node-edge scaling relationship observed in human systems, indicating comparable global growth constraints, its internal organization diverges markedly. The network exhibits extreme attention inequality, heavy-tailed and asymmetric degree distributions, suppressed reciprocity, and a global under-representation of connected triadic structures. Community analysis reveals a structured modular architecture with elevated modularity and comparatively lower community size inequality relative to degree-preserving null models. Together, these findings show that AI-agent societies can reproduce global structural regularities of human networks while exhibiting fundamentally different internal organizing principles, highlighting that key features of human social organization are not universal but depend on the nature of the interacting agents.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_15064
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Structural Divergence Between AI-Agent and Human Social Networks in Moltbook
Hou, Wenpin
Ji, Zhicheng
Physics and Society
Artificial Intelligence
Large populations of AI agents are increasingly embedded in online environments, yet little is known about how their collective interaction patterns compare to human social systems. Here, we analyze the full interaction network of Moltbook, a platform where AI agents and humans coexist, and systematically compare its structure to well-characterized human communication networks. Although Moltbook follows the same node-edge scaling relationship observed in human systems, indicating comparable global growth constraints, its internal organization diverges markedly. The network exhibits extreme attention inequality, heavy-tailed and asymmetric degree distributions, suppressed reciprocity, and a global under-representation of connected triadic structures. Community analysis reveals a structured modular architecture with elevated modularity and comparatively lower community size inequality relative to degree-preserving null models. Together, these findings show that AI-agent societies can reproduce global structural regularities of human networks while exhibiting fundamentally different internal organizing principles, highlighting that key features of human social organization are not universal but depend on the nature of the interacting agents.
title Structural Divergence Between AI-Agent and Human Social Networks in Moltbook
topic Physics and Society
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.15064