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OpenClaw is what Apple intelligence should have been

jakequist.com

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Re: OpenClaw is what Apple intelligence should have been

#261

Post by rhubarbtree »

crazygringo wrote: post #10

> This is exactly what Apple Intelligence should have been... They could have shipped an agentic AI that actually automated your computer instead of summarizing your notifications. Imagine if Siri could genuinely file your taxes, respond to emails, or manage your calendar by actually using your apps, not through some brittle API layer that breaks every update. And this is probably coming, a few years from now. Becaus…

I would guess, and it is a guess, that there are two reasons apple is “behind” in AI. First, they have nowhere near the talent pool or capability in this area. They’re not a technical research lab. For the same reason you don’t expect apple to win the quantum race, they will not lead on AI. Second, AI is a half baked product right now and apple try to ship products that properly work. Even Vision Pro is remarkably polished for a first version. AI on the other hand is likely to suffer catastrophic security problems, embarrassing behaviour, distinctly family-unfriendly output.

Apple probably realised they were hugely behind and then spent time hand wringing over whether they remained cautious or got into the brawl. And they decided to watch from the sidelines, buy in some tech, and see how it develops.

So far that looks entirely reasonable as a decision. If Claude wins, for example, apple need only be sure Claude tools work on Mac to avoid losing users, and they can second-move once things are not so chaotic.

Re: OpenClaw is what Apple intelligence should have been

#262

Post by verdverm »

nerdsniper wrote: post #40
verdverm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

get off your devices when driving, it's as dangerous as being drunk behind the wheel

You don’t look at it, you just talk to it and it can talk back to you. It’s more just having a conversation with a personal assistant while driving. Which is a pretty common thing to do.

If you think it's common to have "conversations" with "personal assistants"

You might be in an echo chamber

Re: OpenClaw is what Apple intelligence should have been

#263

Post by mastermage »

snailmailman wrote: post #238
nilamo wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope so. We're right on the cusp of having computers that actually are everything we ever wanted them to be, ever since scifi started describing devices that could do things for us. There's just a few pesky details left to iron out (who pays for it, insane power demand, opaque models, non-existent security, etc etc). Things actually can "do what I mean, not what I say", now. Truly fascinating to see develop.

Ah yes. “Non-existent security” is only a pesky detail that will surely be ironed out. It’s not a critical flaw in the entirety of the LLM ecosystem that now the computers themselves can be tricked into doing things by asking in just the right way. Anything in the context might be a prompt injection attack, and there isn’t really any reliable solution to that but let’s hook everything up to it, and also give it the t…

I think he was being sarcastic

Re: OpenClaw is what Apple intelligence should have been

#264

Post by orangethief »

> Maybe they just didn’t see it.

They sell it as a concept with every single one of their showcases. They saw it.

> Or maybe they saw it and decided the risk wasn’t worth it.

They sell it as a concept with every single one of their showcases. They wanted to actually be selling it.

The reason is simple.

They failed, like all others. They couldn't sandbox it. They could have done a ghetto form of internal MCP where the AI can ONLY access emails. Or ONLY access pages in a browser when a user presses a button. And so on. But every time they tried, they never managed to sandbox it, and the agent would come out of the gates. Like everyone else did.

Including OpenClaw.

But Apple has a reputation. OpenClaw is an hyped up shitposter. OpenClaw will trailblaze and make the cool thing until it stops causing horrible failures. They will have the molts escape the buckets and ruin the computer of the tech savvy early adopters, until that fateful day when the bucket is sealed.

Then Apple will steal that bucket.

They always do.

I'm not a 40 year old whippersnapper anymore. My options were never those two.

Re: OpenClaw is what Apple intelligence should have been

#265

Post by larodi »

mastermage wrote: post #260
huwsername wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t believe this was ever confirmed by Apple, but there was widespread speculation at the time[1] that the delay was due to the very prompt injection attacks OpenClaw users are now discovering. It would be genuinely catastrophic to ship an insecure system with this kind of data access, even with an ‘unsafe mode’. These kinds of risks can only be _consented to_ by technical people who correctly understand them, le…

The more interesting question I have is if such Prompt Injection Attacks can ever be actualy avoided, with how GenAI works.

Perhaps not, and it is indeed not unwise from Apple to stay away for a while given their ultra-focus on security.

Re: OpenClaw is what Apple intelligence should have been

#266

Post by charcircuit »

trehalose wrote: post #236
charcircuit wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is impossible to address all of the concerns, and it is impossible to predict what concerns may even exist. It will require mass deployment to fully understand the implications of it.

If we already know enough concerns to be certain mass deployment will be disastrous, is it worth it just to better understand the nature of the disaster, which doesn't have to happen in the first place?

Not having perfect security, does not mean it will be disastrous. My OpenClaw has been serving me just fine and I've been getting value out of it integrating and helping me with various tasks.

Re: OpenClaw is what Apple intelligence should have been

#267

Post by SCdF »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #104
IcyWindows wrote: post #35

According to https://1password.com/blog/from-magic-to-malware-how-opencla... , The top skill is/was malware. It's obviously broken, so no, Apple Intelligence should not have been this.

I feel like I’m watching group psychosis where people are just following each other off a cliff. I think the promise of AI and the potential money involved override all self preservation instincts in some people. It would be fine if I could just ignore it, but they are infecting the entire industry.

You need to take every comment about AI and mentally put a little bracketed note beside each one noting technical competence.

AI is basically an software development eternal september: it is by definition allowing a bunch of people who are not competent enough to build software without AI to build it. This is, in many ways, a good thing!

The bad thing is that there are a lot of comments and hype that superficially sound like they are coming from your experienced peers being turned to the light, but are actually from people who are not historically your peers, who are now coming into your spaces with enthusiasm for how they got here.

Like on the topic of this article[0], it would be deranged for Apple (or any company with a registered entity that could be sued) to ship an OpenClaw equivalent. It is, and forever will be[1] a massive footgun that you would not want to be legally responsible for people using safely. Apple especially: a company who proudly cares about your privacy and data safety? Anyone with the kind of technical knowledge you'd expect around HN would know that them moving first on this would be bonkers.

But here we are :-)

[0] OP's article is written by someone who wrote code for a few years nearly 20 years ago.

[1] while LLMs are the underlying technology https://simonwillison.net/tags/lethal-trifecta/

Re: OpenClaw is what Apple intelligence should have been

#268

Post by vimda »

mastermage wrote: post #263
snailmailman wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes. “Non-existent security” is only a pesky detail that will surely be ironed out. It’s not a critical flaw in the entirety of the LLM ecosystem that now the computers themselves can be tricked into doing things by asking in just the right way. Anything in the context might be a prompt injection attack, and there isn’t really any reliable solution to that but let’s hook everything up to it, and also give it the t…

I think he was being sarcastic

Poe's Law strikes again

Re: OpenClaw is what Apple intelligence should have been

#269

Post by xp84 »

sneak wrote: post #157
velcrovan wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

who's "afraid" of green bubbles? it's like saying a toyota corolla driver is afraid of the ford pinto

iMessage lock in is a huge thing. When it was new and was still e2ee I ended up buying iPhones for everyone I regularly messaged. These days it is insecure however because they backdoored the e2ee and kept it backdoored for the FBI, so now Signal is the only messenger I am reachable on. Blue bubble snobbery is presently a mark of ignorance more than anything else.

I agree that it’s stupid to judge people for it, but you do have to admit that especially with not all people having RCS, the feature set of SMS and MMS that you have to deal with when not using iMessage is pretty barbaric. From the potato-quality videos (ironically, I recall QuickTime was heavily involved in that spec, lol) to the asinine way Apple lets you apply a reaction and then sends it as a verbose text… From an iPhone user’s point of view, a “green bubble” means “this conversation will work like it’s 2003.”

Yes, I know 99.999% of Android users are on WhatsApp (or WeChat, Line, or Telegram depending on cultural background) but at least half of iPhone users aren’t on those, so we still have to keep using Messages for a lot of people.

Re: OpenClaw is what Apple intelligence should have been

#270

Post by Brybry »

flexagoon wrote: post #204
podnami wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your prediction that most people actually like to use software?

Do they not? Many phone functions are already available through voice assistants, and have been for a very long time, and yet the vast majority of people still prefer to use them with the UI. Clicking on the weather icon is much easier than asking a chatbot "what's the weather like?"

My elderly mother has an essential tremor (though only in one hand now due to successful ultrasound treatment!) and she would still rather suffer through all her errors with a touch interface than use voice commands.
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