3 ms·

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"? Is

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.

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.