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I’m joining OpenAI

steipete.me

201–210 of 1001 posts

Re: I’m joining OpenAI

#201
Just like the original OpenAI story, this seems like a case of reputation hacking through asymmetry in risk tolerance.

There is not much novel about OpenClaw. Anybody could have thought of this or done it. The reason people have not released an agent that would run by itself, edit its own code and be exposed to the internet is not that it's hard or novel - it's because it is an utterly reckless thing to do. No responsible corporate entity could afford to do it. So we needed someone with little enough to lose, enough skill and willing to be reckless enough to do it and release it openly to let everyone else absorb the risk.

I think he's smart to jump on the job opportunity here because it may well turn out that this goes south in a big way very fast.

Re: I’m joining OpenAI

#202
post #3

Did this guy just exit the first one man billion-dollar startup for... less than a billion?

Everyone is going to have their own flavor of Open Claw within 18 months. The memory architecture (and the general concept of the multi-tiered system) is open source. There's no moat to this kind of thing. But OpenAI is happy to trade his star power for money. And he might build something cool with suddenly unlimited resources. I don't blame the guy. OpenAI is going to change hands 2-3 times over the next 5 years but at the end of the day he will still have the money and equity OpenAI gave him. And his cool project will continue on.

Re: I’m joining OpenAI

#203
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? You basically got 95% of the way there with Claude Code inside of a container. People were using CC outside of development scope for awhile.

> You basically got 95% of the way there with Claude Code inside of a container. OpenClaw and Claude Code aren't solving the same problems. OpenClaw was about having a sandbox, connecting it to a messenger channel, and letting it run wild with tools you gave it.

That’s what CC does…I don’t need a messenger wrapper to do those things.

Re: I’m joining OpenAI

#204
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? You basically got 95% of the way there with Claude Code inside of a container. People were using CC outside of development scope for awhile.

> You basically got 95% of the way there with Claude Code inside of a container. OpenClaw and Claude Code aren't solving the same problems. OpenClaw was about having a sandbox, connecting it to a messenger channel, and letting it run wild with tools you gave it.

A messenger and ssh'ing into Claude Code from your phone aren't that much different.

Re: I’m joining OpenAI

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are very few companies who I trust with my digital data and thus trust to host something like OpenClaw and run it on my behalf: American Express, Capital One, maybe Proton, and maybe Apple. I managed an AI lab team at Capital One and personally I trust them. I don't really understand what this has to do with the post or even OpenClaw. The big draw of OpenClaw (as I understand it) was that you could run it loc…

Prepare for the rug pull...

a tale as old as time ...

Re: I’m joining OpenAI

#207
post #135

Congrats to Peter! Can any OpenClaw power users explain what value the software has provided to them over using Claude code with MCP? I really don’t understand the value of an agent running 24/7, like is it out there working and earning a wage? Whats the real value here outside of buzzwords like an ai personal assistant that can do everything?

There's some neat experiments people post on social media. Mostly, the thing that captures the imagination the most is its sort of like watching a silicon child grow up. They develop their own personalities, they express themselves creatively, they choose for themselves, they choose what they believe and who they become. I know that sounds like anthropomorphism, and maybe it is, but it most definitely does not feel l…

Imagine putting it in a robot with arms and legs, and letting it loose in your house, or your neighborhood. Oh, the possibilities!

Re: I’m joining OpenAI

#208

Potentially amazing opportunity for OpenAI to more meaningfully compete with Claude Code at the developer and hobbyist level. Based on vibes it sure seemed like Claude Code / Opus 4.6 was running away with developer mindshare. Peter single handedly got many of us taking Codex more seriously, at least that's my impression from the conversations I had. Openclaw has gotten more attention over the past 2 weeks than anyth…

> Peter single handedly got many of us taking Codex more seriously, at least that's my impression from the conversations I had. Comments like this feel confusing because I didn't have any association between Codex and OpenClaw before reading your comment. Codex was also seeing a lot of usage before OpenClaw. The whole OpenClaw hype bubble feels like there's a world of social media that I wasn't tapped into last month…

you didn't see because you dont follow peter on twitter. he talked for months now how codex is a better coder.

Re: I’m joining OpenAI

#209
post #96

It’s not like Anthropic or OpenAI were not working on “AI assistants” before OpenClaw, it’s pretty much the endgame as I can see it. This guy just single handedly released something useful (and very insecure) before anyone else. Although that’s impressive, I don’t see more than an acquisition of the hype by OpenAI.

My gut feeling is that OpenAI is desperately searching for The Killer App™ for LLMs and hired Peter to help guide them there. OpenAI has tried a lot of experiments over the years - custom GPTs, the Orion browser, Codex, the Sora "TikTok but AI" app, and all have either been uninspired or more-or-less clones of other products (like Codex as a response to Claude Code). OpenClaw feels compelling, fresh, sci-fi, and pote…

In the AI space there isn’t a single killer app. EVERYTHING is open for disruption. ChatGPT was the start but OpenAI could create tons of other apps. They don’t need to wait for others to do so. People already want them to make a Slack replacement but I’m just wondering why none of the frontier labs are making a simple app platform that could be used to make custom apps like ChatGPT itself, or the Slack clone. Instead, they expect us to brute force app development through the API interface. Each frontier lab really needs their own Replit.

Like, why doesn’t OpenAI build tax filing into ChatGPT? That’s like the immediate use case for LLM-based app development.

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