Comment by hmokiguess
2 days ago
Are these things actually useful or do we have an epidemic of loneliness and a deep need for vanity AI happening?
I say this because I can’t bring myself to finding a use case for it other than a toy that gets boring fast.
One example in some repos around scheduling capabilities mentions “open these things and summarize them for me” this feels like spam and noise not value.
A while back we had a trending tweet about wanting AI to do your dishes for you and not replace creativity, I guess this feels like an attempt to go there but to me it’s the wrong implementation.
I don't have a Claw running right now and I wish I did. I want to start archiving the livestream from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfGL7A2YgUY - YouTube only provide access to the last 12 hours. If I had a Claw on a 24/7 machine somewhere I could message it and say "permanent archive this stream" and it would figure it out and do it.
Not a great use case for Claw really. I'm sure ChatGPT can one shot a Python script to do this with yt-dlp and give you instructions on how to set it up as a service
Yeah it’s all the stuff beyond the one-shotting of the script that make it useful though.
You just get the final result. The video you requested saved.
No copy pasting, no iterating back and forth due to python version issues, no messing around with systemd or whatever else, etc.
Basically the difference between a howto doc providing you instructions and all the tools you need to download and install vs just having your junior sysadmin handle it and hand it off after testing.
These are miles apart in my mind. The script is the easy part.
ChatGPT can do it w/o draining your bank account etc. I’d agree…
But for speed only, I think it’s “your idea but worse” when the steps include something AND instructions on how to do something else. The Signal/Telegram bot will handle it E2E (maybe using a ton more tokens than a webchat but fast). If I’m not mistaken.
You've gotta run it somewhere though - that's the harder part.
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I mean that’s sort of where I think this all will land. Use something like happy cli to connect to CC in a workspace directory where it can generate scripts, markdown files, and systemd unit files. I don’t see why you’d need more than that.
That cuts 500k LoC from the stack and leverages a frontier tool like CC
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Why do you beed ChatGPT for this, this is like two or three lines of code. That you then add to cron.
This is one minute of human work.
I made a basic "claw starter" that you could try. You can progressively go deeper. It starts with just a little "private data" folder that you scaffold and ask the agent to setup the SOUL and stuff, and then you can optionally add in the few builtin skills, or have your assistant start the scheduler/gateway thing if you want to talk to it over telegram.
If you've been shy with using openclaw, give this a try!
https://github.com/kzahel/claw-starter
[I also created https://yepanywhere.com/ - kind of the same philosophy - no custom harnesses, re-use claude/codex session history]
Yeah that fits the “do the dishes for me” thing, but do you still think the implementation behind it is the proper and best way to go about it?
I don't, which is why I'm not running OpenClaw on the live internet right now. See also Andrej's original tweet.
This sounds like it would be better suited for a shell script.
what's a shell script? sounds like an implementation detail that I don't care about, I just want something to do a thing for me.
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If you know the method already, why is cron insufficient? Why use a meat bag to message over cron? Is that the setup phase for a new stream?
This reminded me of a video I saw recently where someone mentioned that piracy is most often a service problem not a price problem. That back in the days people used torrents to get movies because they worked well and were better than searching for stuff at blockbuster, then, came Netflix, and they flocked to it and paid the premium for convenience without even thinking twice and piracy decreased.
I think the analogy here holds, people are lazy, we have a service and UX problem with these tools right now, so convenience beats quality and control for the average Joe.
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I'd have to setup a new VPS, which is fiddly to do from a phone. If I had a Claw that piece would be solved already.
Cron is also the perfect example of the kind of system I've been using for 20+ years where is still prefer to have an LLM configure it for me! Quick, off the top of your head what's the cron syntax for "run this at 8am and 4pm every day pacific time"?
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Could as well have an FFmpeg to the same effect.
But damn, that requires figuring that out yourself, what a disgusting atavism of cave-dwelling neanderthals!
I've been thinking about this (dishes vs creative work). I think it's because our high-production culture requires everyone to figure out their own way of providing value - otherwise you'll go hungry.
Getting a little meta here .
If we were to consider this with an economics-type lens, one could say that there is a finite-yet-unbounded field of possibility within which we can stake our ground to provide value. This field is finite in that we (as individuals, groups, or societies) only have so much knowledge and technology with which to explore the field. As we gain more in either category, the field expands.
Maybe an analogy for this would be terraforming an inhospitable planet such as Mars - our ability to extract value from it and support an increasing amount of actors is limited by how fast we can make it habitable.
the efficiency of industrialization results in less space in the field for people to create value. So the boundaries must be expanded. It's a different kind of work, and maybe this is the distinction between toil and creative work.
And we're in a world now where there is decreasing toil-work -- it's a resource that is becoming more and more scarce. So we must find creative, entrepreneurial ways to keep up.
Anyways, back to the kitchen sink -- doing our dishes is simply not as urgent as doing the creative thing that will help you stay afloat. With this anxious pressure in mind it makes sense to me that people reach for using AI to (attempt to) do the latter.
AI is great at toil-work, so we feel that it ought to be good at creative work too. The lines between the two are very blurry, and there is so much hype and things are moving so fast. But I think the ones who do figure out how to grow in this era will be those who learn to tell the distinction between the two, and resist the urge to let an LLM do the creative work for them. The kids in college right now who don't use AI to write for them, but use it to help gather research and so on.
Another planetary example comes to mind -- it's like there's a new Western gold rush frontier - but instead of it being open territory spanning beyind the horizon, it's slowly being revealed as the water recedes, and we are all already crowded at the shore.