Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:05] Welcome to ChatGPT Curious, a podcast for people who are, well, curious about ChatGPT. I'm, um, your host, Dr. Shantae Cofield, also known as the Maestro, and I created this show to explore what ChatGPT actually is. Really, though, are the files in the computer, how to use it, and what it might mean for how we think, work, create, and move through life. Whether you're skeptical, intrigued, or already experimenting, you're in the right place. All that I ask is that you stay curious. All right, let's get into it.
[00:00:38] Hello, hello, hello, my curious people, and welcome to episode 32.
[00:00:42] I am your grateful, uh, host, the my show, and today we are talking about a little thing called Open Claw. Not Open AI.
[00:00:51] Open Claw? What the. Is that real talk?
[00:00:56] There is a good chance that you haven't even heard heard of it. You haven't heard of Open Open Claw, which is why I'm talking about it today.
[00:01:04] Right off the bat, you do not need to know about it. I just want to put it on your radar so that if and when you do hear about it, you have a rough idea of what's going on and you can ignore it. Full transparency, folks. I don't use it. I don't want to use it. I haven't installed it. I do not recommend that you install it. I don't even fully understand what it is and more so why there's so much hype around it, but I've read enough to be aware of it, and I want to share what I know with you.
[00:01:37] So before we get into our little Open Claw main topic, I got two quick things that I want to share.
[00:01:44] First one, I am circling the drain on a new podcast name, hence why I don't say it when I start the episode. Uh, I am crying a little bit about the lift that it's gonna be to change the. Change everything.
[00:01:59] The website and then redirects and just, I can do it and I will do it.
[00:02:05] Um, and realistically, it probably won't happen for a bit because I am right in the middle of launching some new messaging offers, and then I gotta start delivering on them. So, like, it won't happen for a bit. And that, like, also gives me mild stress because the longer that it takes to happen, the more assets that I have to change.
[00:02:23] Um, but it is what it is.
[00:02:26] So that's just a little update on that second thing to share.
[00:02:30] Uh, is more of a hardware update. But the price, in case you don't know the price of SSDs, which is solid state drives and RAM.
[00:02:38] We have all heard of RAM. Random Access Memory. It is a through the roof right now.
[00:02:44] The AI effect is absolutely hitting us, the consumers. Um, or I could just say consumers who want to buy any kind of memory. And uh, I, I know of this for two. Know about this for two reasons. One, because I read about it, because this is. I be just reading all the things. Um, but two, I was actually looking for a new one terabyte ssd. I've actually been looking for a bit. I had a uh, a little task set in an open AI for a bit for new ssd. I use an SSD for my other podcast and I record all the videos to it and I upload that and I like work off of the ssd. It just saves memory and it's fast.
[00:03:20] Um, and so I was looking because that one was getting full and so I was looking for a new one and then I was like, actually I have an external hard drive. I have like a 12 terabyte something huge. Maybe it's 8. It's. Either way it's huge. I have an external hard drive which is different than an ssd. But um, I have an external hard drive and I back everything, like double back everything up to that. And so I just took all the videos from that SSD and put them onto the, the hard drive. And so I freed up all the space. And so I didn't need a new ssd, but I had been looking. So I've been seeing prices. And then I got this new DJ side quest right for, you know, Lex bought me the DJ controller and so I was like, oh, I need to get a, I want to get a new SSD for songs. I would love to get just like a, you know, simple 1 terabyte SSD and then download songs and put the songs on it and a uh, shock factor. This was like just in the last two weeks I was like, oh, let me look at this. Because I hadn't looked in a bit. And the 1 terabyte SSD's same price as what I paid for a 2 terabyte. Like that's crazy.
[00:04:21] That's crazy. How crazy? How up are things? Well, RAM prices have seen massive hikes of 200 to 400% in many segments. And SSD real retail prices have been uh, up two to three times. And it's doesn't, it's crazy. So you know, that's what I'm seeing as well. The, the one terabyte costs M and what a two terabyte costs. Uh, the two terabyte I think when I paid before, it was like 200 low 200s or something. I, um, actually definitely saw some for like high one hundreds, like 170, 180.
[00:04:56] Uh, and now they are close to 400.
[00:05:00] Insane. Why? Well, manufacturers, they are opting to make chips to be used in AI, AI data centers as opposed to these consumer products. They have a better margins. Uh, apparently folks like memory pricing is always, it's always been a boom, bust kind of thing. And it's always cyclical. Who knew? Not me.
[00:05:22] Uh, but right now, clearly we're in the bad part of that cycle. So if you're looking to buy memory, my advice is don't. Don't buy it now. You're at the top of the market. I would wait. I personally am going to wait.
[00:05:37] I. They do not likely see things coming down until 2027.
[00:05:41] Um, but just putting it on your radar. So let's switch gears. Let's get to the main topic today, which is what the fuck is Open Claw? So originally it was called claudebot. And um, this, that's spelled C L A W D bot. And then they switched the name to Multbod. And that was after Anthropic hit him up and was like, yo, trademark. That's too close to our name. And then somehow it has landed on Open Claw.
[00:06:08] Claw. Open Claw.
[00:06:11] Again, I know about these things because it's the world that I live in now. Like my Threads algorithm especially. I really see a lot of stuff there. Reddit, uh, the newsletters that I subscribe to, the YouTube videos that get served to me, they'd be talking about this stuff and, and in this case, it's talking about claudebot.
[00:06:28] And I just want to keep you curious folks informed. You honestly do not need to know anything about this. I don't recommend. Again, I do not recommend you install this thing. And it's not, not that it's even that easy to install. Like, you do need to have some technical proficiency and go through GitHub and things like that. Um, but you don't, don't do this. You don't need to do it. But I just want to put it on your radar. I just, I want to keep you in the know. So what is this thing? Open Call is, as they define it, an open source autonomous AI agent. It went viral like a few weeks ago, and that was in late January.
[00:07:04] What does open source autonomous AI agent mean? Like, it's like gibberish here. Open source means that you, the user can see and modify the code that it's built on funny. OpenAI is not right. Despite that name. It's not. It started out that way and they were like, just kidding. It's not open source. And Claude, also not open source.
[00:07:24] Autonomous means it works on its own. And then AI agent, We've gone over this before.
[00:07:29] It's a computer program that acts on its own. So yes, it is redundant to have that word autonomous in front of it. But this is, uh. We have said this before as well. People in the tech world are fucking horrendous at naming things. Horrendous. Absolutely horrendous. So. So what you.
[00:07:47] What I would say, you know, you don't need to know. But what you can take away from this, like, what is this thing? Openclaw is a computer program that acts on its own. If you recall, we have been talking about AI agents and agentic AI since episode one. Right. I put it on your radar then. But Most recently episode 29, that was an introduction to Claude code and Claude co work. I was really talking about it then, because that's what they are, right? Especially Claude code. Um, so I will drop that episode in the show notes. But again, agents, they are AI, AKA computer programs that can do things on their own. Right? It is AI that takes action instead of just chatting with you. Right? It can actually do things.
[00:08:31] And that around there is apparently the big draw for Open Call.
[00:08:38] Well, it's one of the two big draws. Maybe I should say one of the two big claws. Okay.
[00:08:44] One is that it can do things it. For you, right? It isn't. It's just like a super agent. It can do things. Claude Code and Claude cowork, right?
[00:08:54] We talked about them in that episode 29. People really use them for coding. Right? Vibe coding, that is Claude Code Excels with coding. Um, they're using cloud Cowork, right. To organize files on their desktop. To just organize their desktop, organize their photos, do some stuff in Excel, things like that.
[00:09:13] Open Claw, it can do all of those things. And I really got to emphasize the vibe coding capabilities.
[00:09:19] Uh, if you. If you're like, what the are you talking about Vibe coding? I did an episode on that. Uh, that was episode 26. I will link that as well. Uh, but I gotta emphasize the. The vibe coding capabilities here. And that's what most of these people that I see and that I'm talking about. That's what they're most excited about using it for. Um, but openclaw can book flights, it can change your calendar, it can answer emails, it can read emails, it can Send emails. It can do anything that you're using Zapier for kicker here without you telling it to do it.
[00:09:58] This thing is like super independent, works on its own.
[00:10:03] The second big draw, right, the first big draw is that it can do all these things. The second big draw is that you communicate with it via, via, uh, messaging apps that you already use such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, uh, Imessage and Slack.
[00:10:20] Pretty wild, right? You set it up as a contact and then you just text it, right? Uh, you just text it like a person.
[00:10:26] My, my outline went all crazy there. Uh, and you text it like a person, which is a, is definitely a draw for people. But what's interesting is that the folks that are using this are like, you know, high level coders or tech people, you know, folks, I should say folks with, with tech tenacity. Um, and so it's interesting that they're like, it's this novelty, if anything. It's not like they can't use a different interface. Um, these folks are able to use like command line interface, right? They're working in terminal. But it's just something that's, in my opinion, it's novel. And so, you know, folks like that, um, again, you set it up as a contact, you text it like a person. The steps are like significantly more complicated than that, but that is like the net effect of what's happening.
[00:11:12] Worth noting with all of this. And I was like, oh, that's interesting is that this is not its own LLM. It is a computer program, but it's not an LLM. It uses what's already out there, right? It'll use Claude, it'll use Chat GPT, it'll use Gemini, it's acting as like a rapper. You connect it to your LLM of choice.
[00:11:32] If folks, I'm um, over here yapping and I've lost you, I don't blame you, right? I honestly, I, again, I don't really fully understand it. Mainly it's because I don't understand the appeal. I'm like, this seems like it's kind of what already existed, just superpowered. Which as I'm saying that I'm like, it feels very Tim the Tool Man Taylor and it's like more power. And you're like, why would you put a bad extra battery pack on that saw? That's a bad idea.
[00:11:57] But, and the bad idea in this case is that there's a massive downside, which is security, right? The only way that this thing is going to be able to do, or can do all of the things I listed before on its own is that it has to have access to all of your, it's got to have access to all of your passwords, your API keys, your logins, your sensitive data.
[00:12:22] This leaves users hella, uh, vulnerable to attacks and to the hacks which has already happened and basically is a way to give not well intentioned people the keys to your proverbial digital life. Again, I 100 do not recommend that you install it. Don't do it. Don't do it.
[00:12:46] There, there was and there continues to be, but definitely when it first like went viral, there was a ton of hype and excitement around openclaw. And it all just feels characteristic of the AI world. And I don't like want to say that in like the most pejorative way, but like that is what I see as an outsider. I'm like, what are so excited about this? And then like the excitement dies down and they're like on to the next thing. There's definitely like an ongoing excitement about the capability of just AI in general and how quickly it is advancing. Um, but you definitely see the like, it feels like it's young dudes and my, when I say feels like it is these young dudes that just like love to talk and they're all vibes. It's the same guys that you would expect. They're like into crypto and like that.
[00:13:28] Uh, but those same guys, it was actually trending for a bit and perhaps still is, but definitely trending more to buy a Mac Mini specifically just to run openclaw. And why would you do this? Because this would allow you to have your Mac Mini just on all the time, separate from your main computer or your main laptop, whatever you use. This thing just sits and Mac Minis aren't that expensive. And it can handle it. It has the software to be, uh, that has the hardware to be able to handle it.
[00:13:56] And then openclaw can act like a true AI assistant, right? It's always available. It would never sleep. You just leave the computer on all the time, right? Because you install this thing and then the computer has to be on for you to be able to use it, you know, for you to be able to text it.
[00:14:10] Uh, and so if you buy a separate computer, it can always be on. All you gotta do is text it. Weird. This is weird behavior. Uh, again, I don't really understand the hype, but I'm also gonna admit that I am not deep enough into the vibe coding world. I'm definitely not deep enough into the Agent building world.
[00:14:29] And so I don't understand the hype, but I want to keep you informed about the things. The big dogs in the space would clearly disagree with me, even though they just be going off of.
[00:14:40] Off of vibes. Uh, but what is the guy's name? I want to just make sure that, that I get it.
[00:14:46] Get that I get his name. Right. Uh, but OpenAI has actually hired Peter Steinberger. He is the guy who made. Created Open Claw. Uh, they hired him on February 14th. I have no idea how much they hired him for some crazy amount. I didn't even look it up. Um, but I saw that and it was a big deal. It's trending and it's just like, clearly they believe in it. And I think the quote was, they hired him to drive the next generation of personal agents. So classic move here. Very. It's giving meta right buy the thing that's threatening to do what you haven't done yet. All right, let's. Let's hit this last section and then wrap it up because we don't need to be belaboring the point about this thing. So let's chat about how I use whatever LLM I used this week. So each episode, if you don't know you're new here, welcome, welcome, welcome. If you're new here, I think we did pick up some new listeners. We got 25 reviews, by the way, and 100 email subscribers. Uh, but we got some new listeners from, uh, I think from Share when I shared this shared, uh, an episode on Thread. So if you're new here, welcome. Uh, each episode I share a quick example of how I used an LLM that week or how someone that I know use nil on this week. That week.
[00:16:07] This week I used Claude to learn about Open Claw. I use it to put this episode together because I didn't know about it and I haven't really watched any YouTube videos. It just doesn't interest me. Um, but I was like, hey, let me just like, do a little bit of digging and a little bit of learning and a little bit of back and forth and trying to understand what these terms are and make an episode for myself and for my people. So like I said earlier, uh, I've been deep in the weeds of building out and launching the new messaging offers. Um, so there have been no AI side quests, no, you know, real fun uses or use cases for, for the LLMs.
[00:16:49] Um, but also that Claude usage limit. I talked about it in last week's episode. It definitely makes me think twice before asking Things, though, honestly. And from what I, uh, what I've experienced is that if I'm not coding things, I'm not even coming close to the usage limits. So last week I was talking about coding sales pages and things like that. So, like, there's a lot more that's generated now.
[00:17:13] Like, I'm not, I'm, I'm not using it for that. So, um, any, like, you know, discussions or even something like this, like, doing these episodes, um, it is not even. I haven't come even close to hitting my weekly limit or my individual session limit. So, you know, like I said last week, I am. Overall, I'm not mad about the fact that Anthropic has these limits and enforces them. I think that it's a good thing. Uh, I might come to regret that statement one day, uh, especially if they just throttle it and because it's really such a simple switch to be like, and now we've made it so that a quarter of the, you know, amount you use it before, now that counts as full usage. And now you've met your quota. Like, they could do that. Um, but for now, that statement is true. I am happy about these limits. So we'll see. All right, that, my friends, is all for today. Hopefully you found this episode helpful if you did consider leaving a rating or review. Like I said, we got 25 celebrating. Let's see if we can get to 30 one at a time.
[00:18:20] I, uh, know I was going to say let's get 26, but why I go 26 when you go 30. But I am grateful for every single listen. I am grateful for every single share. I'm grateful for every single message you send, so don't forget. Also, ah, folks, I have a companion newsletter, the Curious Companion. That name will likely stay, which I'm excited about. I. In the the. As I'm thinking about a new name for the podcast, I'm definitely going to keep the word curious or something like that in there. Curious curiosity.
[00:18:45] Because that's less things that I have to change. And also I really dislike what that what that means, represents and stands for. So, uh, that will say the same. But I have the companion newsletter, the Curious Companion, and that thing drops every Thursday. And it's basically the podcast episode in text format. So if you prefer to read or you just want a written record, join the newsletter fam. You can head to chatgptcurious.com forward slash newsletter. That URL will have to change, but everything will be, uh, a, uh, redirect. It's okay. It's okay, telling myself it's gonna be okay. Or you can check out the link in the show notes. As always, Endlessly, endlessly. One more time. Endlessly appreciative for every single one of you. Until we chat again next Thursday, stay curious.
