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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
What does it "do for me"? I want to do things. I don't want a probabilistic machine I can't trust to do things.
The things that annoy me in life - tax reports, doctor appointments, sending invoices. No way in hell I am letting LLM do that! Everything else in life I enjoy.
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 $$$.
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.
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.
5 replies →
My life is wayyy too basic and simple to need any sort of always available digital agent like these!
I’m actually way happier once I actively started looking to REDUCE the technology in my life.
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.
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.
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.
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.
2 replies →
> 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.
2 replies →
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.
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.
2 replies →
> It’s as if ChatGPT is an autonomous agent that can do anything and keeps running constantly.
Really stretching the definition of "anything."
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?
Monitoring, content generation, analysis, retroactive interference, activity emulation
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.
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.
Running constantly = more revenue for openAI.
You maintain a base level of common sense.
Never underestimate the lengths people will go to, just to avoid reading their damn email! :)
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?
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.
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.
3 replies →
What does it "do for me"? I want to do things. I don't want a probabilistic machine I can't trust to do things.
The things that annoy me in life - tax reports, doctor appointments, sending invoices. No way in hell I am letting LLM do that! Everything else in life I enjoy.