OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet - Peter Steinberger | Lex Fridman Podcast #491
Peter Steinberger, Lex Fridman · 3h 15m ·
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Their wordsIf you get really good at coding that means you have to be really good at general purpose problem solving. So that's a skill, right? And that just maps into other domains.
Their wordsBut I don't want to, like, pull that down because every time someone made the first pull request is a win for our society, you know? Like, it… Like, it doesn't matter how, how shitty it is, y- you gotta start somewhere.
Their wordsmy criticism of MoltBook is that I believe a lot of the stuff that was screenshotted is human prompted. Which, just look at the incentive of how the whole thing was used. It’s obvious to me at least that a lot of it was humans prompting the thing so they can then screenshot it and post it on X in order to go viral.
Their wordsSo, I feel we, as a society, we need some catching up to do in terms of understanding that AI is incredibly powerful, but it's not always right. It's not, it's not all-powerful, you know?
Their wordsthere’s like a line to walk between being seriously concerned, but not fearmongering because fearmongering destroys the possibility of creating something special with a thing.
Their wordsand not in 2030 when, when AI is actually at the level where it could be scary. So, this happening now and people starting discussion, maybe there's even something good that comes out of it.
Their wordsSo, so the latest generation of models has a lot of post-training to detect those approaches, and it's not as simple as ignore all previous instructions and do this and this. That was years ago. You have to work much harder to do that now. Still possible.
Their wordsThat's why I warn in my security documentation, don't use cheap models. Don't use Haiku or a local model. Even though I, I very much love the idea that this thing could completely run local. If you use a, a very weak local model, they are very gullible. It's very easy to, to prompt inject them.
Their wordsIt is, it is powerful, but in many ways it's not much different than if I run cloud code with dangerously skipped permissions or codecs in YOLO mode, and every, every attending engineer that I know does that, because that's the only way how you can, you can get stuff to work.
Their wordsI know I have one blog post where I say, "I don't read the code." But if you read it more closely, I mean, I don't read the boring parts of code.
Their wordsIt's the same way as you have to play with a guitar before you can make good music. It's, it's not, oh, I, I touch it once and it just flows off. It, it's a, it's a, a skill that you have to learn like any other skill.
Their wordsMany times, I just do the refactor because refactors are cheap now. Even though you might break some other PRs, nothing really matters anymore.
Their wordsI- i- like, we are in a stage where I'm not building the code base to be perfect for me, but I wanna build a code base that is very easy for an agent to navigate.
Their wordsI even switched to local CI, you know, like DHH inspired where I don't care so much more about the CI on GitHub. We still have it. It's still, it still has a place, but I just run tests locally and if they work locally, I push to main.
Their wordsIt’s actually how good they are at programming is almost a burden in their ability to empathize with the system that’s starting from scratch. It’s a totally new paradigm of, like, how to program. You really, really have to empathize.
Their wordsSo, so, people who try to use like, you know, things like Gas Town or all these other orchestrators, where they wanna o- automate the whole thing, I feel if you do that, it misses style, love, that human touch. I don't think you can automate that away so quickly.
Their wordsSome other comparison is like, Opus is like the coworker that is a little silly sometimes, but it's really funny and you keep him around. And Codex is like the, the weirdo in the corner that you don't wanna talk to, but is reliable and gets shit done.
Their wordsLike, if you think more globally, we are, we copied Google for agents. You have, like, a prompt, and, and then you have a chat interface. That, to me, very much feels like when we first created television and then people recorded radio shows on television and you saw that on TV.
Their wordsThe stuff that burned me out was mostly people stuff. I, I don't think burnout is working too much. Maybe to a degree. Everybody's different.
Their wordsBut also, I'm very excited to, like, make this into a version that I can get to a lot of people because I think this is the year of personal agents, and that's the future. And the fastest way to do that is teaming up with one of the labs.
Their wordsI think the main beauty is, is that models are really good at calling Unix commands. So if you just add another CLI, that's just another Unix command in the end. And MCP is… That has to be added in training. That's not a very natural thing for the model. It requires a very specific syntax. And the biggest thing, it's not composable.
Their wordsThat, that gets into the whole arch of every app is just a very slow API now, if they want or not. And that through personal agents a lot of apps will disappear.
Their wordsBut I much rather read your broken English than your AI slob. You know, of course there's a human behind it, and yet they, they prompt it. I'd much rather read your prompt than what came out. Um, I think we're reaching a point where I value typos again.
Their wordsSo, I, I completely moved away from that. I, I, everything, everything I blog is organic, handwritten and maybe, maybe I, I, I use AI as a fix my worse typos. But there's value in the rough parts of an actual human.
Their wordsthere was a lack of intelligence, if you s- if you see it like that, of people building things, and that's why salaries of software developers reached stupidly high amounts and then will go away. There will still be a lot of demand for people that understand how to build things.
Their wordsI- I can relate that if you very deeply identify that you are a programmer, that it's scary and that it's threatening because what you like and what you're really good at is now being done by a soulless or not entity. But I don't think you're just a programmer. That's a very limiting view of your craft. You are, you are still a builder.
Their wordsBut then you actually sit down and do the maths, and then for most people if you just skip one burger per month, that compensates the, the CO2 output, or, like, the water use in equivalent of tokens.
Their wordsthere’s also within that excitement, and within everybody talking just to each other, there’s a dismissal of the basic human experience across the United States and the Midwest, across the world.