7 ms·

I still dont understand the hype for any of this claw stuff

stingraycharles 8mo ago
It’s as if ChatGPT is an autonomous agent that can do anything and keeps running constantly. Most AI tools require supervision, this is the opposite. To many people, the idea of having an AI always active in the background doing whatever they want them to do is interesting.
- thegrim33 8mo ago
  How do you need to supervise this "less" than an LLM that you can feed input to and get output back from? What does it mean that it's "running continuously"? Isn't it just waiting for input from different sources and responding to it? As the person you're replying to feels, I just don't understand. All the descriptions are just random cool sounding words/phrases strung together but none of it actually providing any concrete detail of what it actually is.
  - aydyn 8mo ago
    It's not just waiting for input, it has a heartbeat.md prompt that runs every X minutes. That gives it a feeling that it's always on and thinking.
    - tovej 8mo ago
      That gives _you_ a feeling that it's always on. It still can't model time.
      - tovej 8mo ago
        Or feeling things for that matter.
        aydyn 8mo ago
        Of course it can "model time". It has access to system clock and know its heartbeat rate. Can you "model time" when you are asleep? Whatever "model time" means, it sounds like projection to be frank. > Or feeling things for that matter. Philosophical zombie experiment, the conclusion is qualia dont matter, only IO. If two systems have the same behavior there is no meaningful difference.
        tovej 8mo ago
        Modeling time means there is some way of e.g. evolving state over time, or projecting change over a period of time. Or being able to count time passing (without being told by external sources). The LLM has no model of time. It is being called at regular times. If the cronjob misses two days or even a whole year of calling the LLM, the LLM will not respond any differently from if the cronjob was on time.
        aydyn 8mo ago
        You keep saying "LLM has no model of time" but that doesn't inherently mean anything. If you give it clock as input, it will observe the passage of time and can model it. The entire explosion of the AI industry due to LLMs is the observation that their abilities generalize, so there's no reason to believe that LLMs can't "model time". They can, if you tell it to and give it proper input.
      - deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
  - jstummbillig 8mo ago
    > Isn't it just waiting for input from different sources and responding to it? Well, yes. "Just" that. Only that this is at a high level a good description of how all humans do anything, so, you know.
    - dragonwriter 8mo ago
      Yeah, and if you give another human access to all your private information and accounts, they need lots of supervision, too; history is replete with examples demonstrating this.
      - aix1 8mo ago
        But there's typically plenty at stake for the recipient. If my accountant tried to use my financial information in some improper way, he'd better have a good plan for what comes next.
  - maccam912 8mo ago
    I don't have one going but I do get the appeal. One example might be that it is prompted behind the scenes every time an email comes in and it sorts it, unsubscribes from spam, other tedious stuff you have to do now that is annoying but necessary. Well that is something running in the background, not necessarily continuously in the sense that it's going every second, but could be invoked at any point in time on an incoming email. That particular use case wouldn't sit well with me with today's LLMs, but if we got to a point where I could trust one to handle this task without screwing up then I'd be on board.
  - phil21 8mo ago
    I’m sure there are other ways of doing what I’m doing, but openclaw was the first “package it up and have it make sense” project that captured my imagination enough to begin playing with AI beyond simple copy/paste stuff from chatGPT. One example from last night: I have openclaw running on a mostly sandboxed NUC on my lab/IoT network at home. While at dinner someone mentioned I should change my holiday light WLED pattern to St Patrick’s day vs Valentine’s Day. I just told openclaw (via a chat channel) the wled controller hostname, and to propose some appropriately themes for the holiday, investigate the API, and go ahead and implement the chosen theme plus set it as the active sundown profile. I came back home to my lights displaying a well chosen pattern I’d never have come up with outside hours of tinkering, and everything configured appropriately. Went from a chore/task that would have taken me a couple hours of a weekend or evening to something that took 5 minutes or less. All it was doing was calling out to Codex for this, but it acting as a gateway/mediator/relay for both the access channel part plus tooling/skills/access is the “killer app” part for me. I also worked with it to come up with a promox VE API skill and it’s now repeatable able to spin up VMS with my normalized defaults including brand new cloud init images of Linux flavors I’ve never configured on that hypervisor before. A chore I hate doing so now I can iterate in my lab much faster. Also is very helpful spinning up dev environments of various software to mess with on those vms after creation. I haven’t really had it be very useful as a typical “personal assistant” both due to lack of time investment and running against its (lack of) security model for giving it access to comms - but as a “junior sysadmin” it’s becoming quite capable.
    - fatata123 8mo ago
      [dead]
    - handfuloflight 8mo ago
      Great story. And it distills what the claw stuff is all about, in terms of utility is actually here. It's the multitude of "channels", out of the box, that you can enable that allow you to speak with the actual AI agent with access to the configured environment.
- vivzkestrel 8mo ago
  what are you guys running constantly? no seriously i havent run a single task in the world of LLMs yet for more than 5 mins, what are you guys running 24x7? mind elaborating?
  - picardo 8mo ago
    The key idea is not running constantly, but being always on, and being able to react to external events, not just your chat input. So you can set a claw up to do something every time you get a call.
  - boxedemp 8mo ago
    Monitoring, content generation, analysis, retroactive interference, activity emulation
  - sensanaty 8mo ago
    They're creating blogposts that try to character assassinate OSS maintainers that refuse the AI slop PRs in their repos. Next up I assume it'll be some form of mass scam, probably a crypto scam of some sort, yknow that kinda good stuff that's definitely useful for society.
- nozzlegear 8mo ago
  > It’s as if ChatGPT is an autonomous agent that can do anything and keeps running constantly. Really stretching the definition of "anything."
- bitcoinmoney 8mo ago
  Running constantly = more revenue for openAI.
selridge 8mo ago
You don’t understand the allure of having a computer actually do stuff for you instead of being a place where you receive email and get yelled at by a linter?
- ranger_danger 8mo ago
  Perhaps people are just too jaded about the whole "I'll never have to work again" or "the computer can do all my work for me" miracle that has always been just around the corner for decades.
  - selridge 8mo ago
    I do t see either of those as the premise. This is about getting the computer to do the stuff we had been promised computing would make easier, stuff that was never capital-H Hard but just annoying. Most of the real claw skills are people connecting stuff that has always been connectable but it has been so fiddly as to make it a full time side project to maintain, or you need to opt into a narrow walled garden that someone can monetize to really get connectivity. Now you can just get an LLM to learn apple’s special calendar format so you can connect it to a note-taking app in a way that only you might want. You don’t need to make it a second job to learn whatever glue needs to make that happen.
    - tovej 8mo ago
      Reading some documentation to figure out a format is something you do once and takes you a few minutes. Are you a developer? Then this is something you probably do a couple times a day. Prompting the correct version will take longer and will leave you with much less understanding of the system you just implemented. So once it fails you don't know how to fix it.
      - selridge 8mo ago
        I love that the posture is I have a problem I need you to fix haha. I don't need you to fix my problems. I'm reporting that the LLM-based solution beats the dogshit out of the old "become a journeyman on one of 11 billion bullshit formats or processes" practice.
znzjzjsj 8mo ago
The creator was hired by OpenAI after coincidentally deciding codex was superior to all other harnesses not long before. It’s mostly marketing. Still an interesting idea but it’s not really novel or difficult. Well, doing it securely would actually be incredibly impressive and worth big $$$.
- superfrank 8mo ago
  The creator has an estimated net worth of $50 million to $200 million prior to Open AI hiring him. If you listen to any interviews with him, doesn't really seem like the type of person who's driven by money and I get the impression that no matter what OpenAI is paying him, his life will remain pretty much unchanged (from a financial perspective at least). He also still talks very fondly about Claude Code and openly admits it's better at a lot of things, but he thinks Codex fits his development workflow better. I really, really don't think there's a conspiracy around the Codex thing like you're implying. I know plenty of devs who don't work for OpenAI who prefer Codex ever since 5.2 was released and if you read up a little on Peter Steinberger he really doesn't seem like the type of person who would be saying things like that if he didn't believe them. Don't get me wrong, I'm not fan boy-ing him. He seems like a really quirky dude and I disagree with a ton of his opinions, but I just really don't get the impression that he's driven by money, especially now that he already had more than he could spend in a lifetime.
  - tovej 8mo ago
    You're telling me that a person that's greedy enough to have a net worth of several tens of millions doesn't care about money? Pull the other one, it's got bells on.
    - wartywhoa23 8mo ago
      Oh, the good old modest selfless millionaire fairytale to inspire modest selfless zeronaires! Never fails.
      - objektif 8mo ago
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
rdiddly 8mo ago
Never underestimate the lengths people will go to, just to avoid reading their damn email! :)
jesse_dot_id 8mo ago
You maintain a base level of common sense.
geophph 8mo ago
My life is wayyy too basic and simple to need any sort of always available digital agent like these!
- yoyohello13 8mo ago
  I’m actually way happier once I actively started looking to REDUCE the technology in my life.
  - aix1 8mo ago
    I've reached a similar conclusion, though not by targetting technology specifically. Rather, I got into the habit of asking myself "Does X enhance my life in some way?" It's interesting what this simple question can uncover.
  - enether 8mo ago
    In a way I think handing off digital tasks to an AI bot that does it behind the scenes IS reducing technology in your life. But has to be done carefully to not increase the scope of things being done
wartywhoa23 8mo ago
Please find and read Stanislav Lem's "Washing Machine Tragedy" to get an idea of what's going on here.

It’s as if ChatGPT is an autonomous agent that can do anything and keeps running constantly. Most AI tools require supervision, this is the opposite. To many people, the idea of having an AI always active in the background doing whatever they want them to do is interesting.

thegrim33 8mo ago
How do you need to supervise this "less" than an LLM that you can feed input to and get output back from? What does it mean that it's "running continuously"? Isn't it just waiting for input from different sources and responding to it? As the person you're replying to feels, I just don't understand. All the descriptions are just random cool sounding words/phrases strung together but none of it actually providing any concrete detail of what it actually is.
- aydyn 8mo ago
  It's not just waiting for input, it has a heartbeat.md prompt that runs every X minutes. That gives it a feeling that it's always on and thinking.
  - tovej 8mo ago
    That gives _you_ a feeling that it's always on. It still can't model time.
    - tovej 8mo ago
      Or feeling things for that matter.
      - aydyn 8mo ago
        Of course it can "model time". It has access to system clock and know its heartbeat rate. Can you "model time" when you are asleep? Whatever "model time" means, it sounds like projection to be frank. > Or feeling things for that matter. Philosophical zombie experiment, the conclusion is qualia dont matter, only IO. If two systems have the same behavior there is no meaningful difference.
        tovej 8mo ago
        Modeling time means there is some way of e.g. evolving state over time, or projecting change over a period of time. Or being able to count time passing (without being told by external sources). The LLM has no model of time. It is being called at regular times. If the cronjob misses two days or even a whole year of calling the LLM, the LLM will not respond any differently from if the cronjob was on time.
        aydyn 8mo ago
        You keep saying "LLM has no model of time" but that doesn't inherently mean anything. If you give it clock as input, it will observe the passage of time and can model it. The entire explosion of the AI industry due to LLMs is the observation that their abilities generalize, so there's no reason to believe that LLMs can't "model time". They can, if you tell it to and give it proper input.
    - deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
- jstummbillig 8mo ago
  > Isn't it just waiting for input from different sources and responding to it? Well, yes. "Just" that. Only that this is at a high level a good description of how all humans do anything, so, you know.
  - dragonwriter 8mo ago
    Yeah, and if you give another human access to all your private information and accounts, they need lots of supervision, too; history is replete with examples demonstrating this.
    - aix1 8mo ago
      But there's typically plenty at stake for the recipient. If my accountant tried to use my financial information in some improper way, he'd better have a good plan for what comes next.
- maccam912 8mo ago
  I don't have one going but I do get the appeal. One example might be that it is prompted behind the scenes every time an email comes in and it sorts it, unsubscribes from spam, other tedious stuff you have to do now that is annoying but necessary. Well that is something running in the background, not necessarily continuously in the sense that it's going every second, but could be invoked at any point in time on an incoming email. That particular use case wouldn't sit well with me with today's LLMs, but if we got to a point where I could trust one to handle this task without screwing up then I'd be on board.
- phil21 8mo ago
  I’m sure there are other ways of doing what I’m doing, but openclaw was the first “package it up and have it make sense” project that captured my imagination enough to begin playing with AI beyond simple copy/paste stuff from chatGPT. One example from last night: I have openclaw running on a mostly sandboxed NUC on my lab/IoT network at home. While at dinner someone mentioned I should change my holiday light WLED pattern to St Patrick’s day vs Valentine’s Day. I just told openclaw (via a chat channel) the wled controller hostname, and to propose some appropriately themes for the holiday, investigate the API, and go ahead and implement the chosen theme plus set it as the active sundown profile. I came back home to my lights displaying a well chosen pattern I’d never have come up with outside hours of tinkering, and everything configured appropriately. Went from a chore/task that would have taken me a couple hours of a weekend or evening to something that took 5 minutes or less. All it was doing was calling out to Codex for this, but it acting as a gateway/mediator/relay for both the access channel part plus tooling/skills/access is the “killer app” part for me. I also worked with it to come up with a promox VE API skill and it’s now repeatable able to spin up VMS with my normalized defaults including brand new cloud init images of Linux flavors I’ve never configured on that hypervisor before. A chore I hate doing so now I can iterate in my lab much faster. Also is very helpful spinning up dev environments of various software to mess with on those vms after creation. I haven’t really had it be very useful as a typical “personal assistant” both due to lack of time investment and running against its (lack of) security model for giving it access to comms - but as a “junior sysadmin” it’s becoming quite capable.
  - fatata123 8mo ago
    [dead]
  - handfuloflight 8mo ago
    Great story. And it distills what the claw stuff is all about, in terms of utility is actually here. It's the multitude of "channels", out of the box, that you can enable that allow you to speak with the actual AI agent with access to the configured environment.
vivzkestrel 8mo ago
what are you guys running constantly? no seriously i havent run a single task in the world of LLMs yet for more than 5 mins, what are you guys running 24x7? mind elaborating?
- picardo 8mo ago
  The key idea is not running constantly, but being always on, and being able to react to external events, not just your chat input. So you can set a claw up to do something every time you get a call.
- boxedemp 8mo ago
  Monitoring, content generation, analysis, retroactive interference, activity emulation
- sensanaty 8mo ago
  They're creating blogposts that try to character assassinate OSS maintainers that refuse the AI slop PRs in their repos. Next up I assume it'll be some form of mass scam, probably a crypto scam of some sort, yknow that kinda good stuff that's definitely useful for society.
nozzlegear 8mo ago
> It’s as if ChatGPT is an autonomous agent that can do anything and keeps running constantly. Really stretching the definition of "anything."
bitcoinmoney 8mo ago
Running constantly = more revenue for openAI.

selridge 8mo ago

You don’t understand the allure of having a computer actually do stuff for you instead of being a place where you receive email and get yelled at by a linter?

ranger_danger 8mo ago
Perhaps people are just too jaded about the whole "I'll never have to work again" or "the computer can do all my work for me" miracle that has always been just around the corner for decades.
- selridge 8mo ago
  I do t see either of those as the premise. This is about getting the computer to do the stuff we had been promised computing would make easier, stuff that was never capital-H Hard but just annoying. Most of the real claw skills are people connecting stuff that has always been connectable but it has been so fiddly as to make it a full time side project to maintain, or you need to opt into a narrow walled garden that someone can monetize to really get connectivity. Now you can just get an LLM to learn apple’s special calendar format so you can connect it to a note-taking app in a way that only you might want. You don’t need to make it a second job to learn whatever glue needs to make that happen.
  - tovej 8mo ago
    Reading some documentation to figure out a format is something you do once and takes you a few minutes. Are you a developer? Then this is something you probably do a couple times a day. Prompting the correct version will take longer and will leave you with much less understanding of the system you just implemented. So once it fails you don't know how to fix it.
    - selridge 8mo ago
      I love that the posture is I have a problem I need you to fix haha. I don't need you to fix my problems. I'm reporting that the LLM-based solution beats the dogshit out of the old "become a journeyman on one of 11 billion bullshit formats or processes" practice.

znzjzjsj 8mo ago

The creator was hired by OpenAI after coincidentally deciding codex was superior to all other harnesses not long before. It’s mostly marketing. Still an interesting idea but it’s not really novel or difficult. Well, doing it securely would actually be incredibly impressive and worth big $$$.

superfrank 8mo ago
The creator has an estimated net worth of $50 million to $200 million prior to Open AI hiring him. If you listen to any interviews with him, doesn't really seem like the type of person who's driven by money and I get the impression that no matter what OpenAI is paying him, his life will remain pretty much unchanged (from a financial perspective at least). He also still talks very fondly about Claude Code and openly admits it's better at a lot of things, but he thinks Codex fits his development workflow better. I really, really don't think there's a conspiracy around the Codex thing like you're implying. I know plenty of devs who don't work for OpenAI who prefer Codex ever since 5.2 was released and if you read up a little on Peter Steinberger he really doesn't seem like the type of person who would be saying things like that if he didn't believe them. Don't get me wrong, I'm not fan boy-ing him. He seems like a really quirky dude and I disagree with a ton of his opinions, but I just really don't get the impression that he's driven by money, especially now that he already had more than he could spend in a lifetime.
- tovej 8mo ago
  You're telling me that a person that's greedy enough to have a net worth of several tens of millions doesn't care about money? Pull the other one, it's got bells on.
  - wartywhoa23 8mo ago
    Oh, the good old modest selfless millionaire fairytale to inspire modest selfless zeronaires! Never fails.
    - objektif 8mo ago

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

rdiddly 8mo ago

Never underestimate the lengths people will go to, just to avoid reading their damn email! :)

jesse_dot_id 8mo ago

You maintain a base level of common sense.

geophph 8mo ago

My life is wayyy too basic and simple to need any sort of always available digital agent like these!

yoyohello13 8mo ago
I’m actually way happier once I actively started looking to REDUCE the technology in my life.
- aix1 8mo ago
  I've reached a similar conclusion, though not by targetting technology specifically. Rather, I got into the habit of asking myself "Does X enhance my life in some way?" It's interesting what this simple question can uncover.
- enether 8mo ago
  In a way I think handing off digital tasks to an AI bot that does it behind the scenes IS reducing technology in your life. But has to be done carefully to not increase the scope of things being done

wartywhoa23 8mo ago

Please find and read Stanislav Lem's "Washing Machine Tragedy" to get an idea of what's going on here.