OpenClaw surpasses React to become the most-starred software project on GitHub

How so?

A spouse can be amazing, or can destroy your life. Would you use that as an argument against marriage?

1. How much can you spend on this trip? 2. Is first/business class necessary? 3. Is a layover acceptable if it's cheaper? 3a. Is it better to have a 4am flight nonstop or a 7am flight with a layover? 4. Are there preferred airlines? 5. Are there preferred hotel chains? What's the hotel budget? Do you want to pay extra for a nice view? 6. What kind of car should you rent? Is there equipment you'll be handling?

etc...

This is the kind of stuff that's easy(-ish) to communicate by presenting a list of options to a user through an actual interface. It sucks doing it through voice; think of the old phone systems where you had to go through droning "If you would like to rent an SUV, press 1. If you would like to rent a sedan, press 2. To speak to an operator, press 0."

So no, you never had a voice interface for booking flights; you had a human brain to whom you delegated, which is very different.

It can only ever be a linear sequence of input

The 2 dimensional field of a screen and a mouse and keyboard give you extreme amounts of input and allow you to contextualize that input in arbitrary ways that intuitively make sense to people with minimal training. Most people do not need to be taught that "Paste" goes to the active window.

We barely even touch the surface of what is possible through this set of input devices and output and yet we can't even get that level of fine grained and reliable control into touch screen devices and gamepads, let alone a linear stream of pitch.

Voice cannot be a robust interface. It isn't between humans. There's immense nonverbal communication and human communication also relies very heavily on preshared context to actually get that info across in the first place. Even with all that machinery, human voice is generally considered to only carry, regardless of language, 44ish bits per second of data.

People will always do stupid things. My guess is less than 10% (perhaps even less than 1%) are using it for work. Most workplaces wouldn't allow unfettered AI usage.

80-90% try it, find it unreliable and buggy, and give up on it.

Of the remaining ones, likely 90+% are not using it in (very) dangerous ways.

People like me using it for boring things aren't making the news, and aren't writing blog posts about "Look at the cool stuff I've done!" because getting OpenClaw to notify me of class openings is not worth writing about.

In my (large) company, we have a Slack channel for OpenClaw. Over 400 people are in that channel. Let's assume 10% are using it (at home). No one's lost files/emails or any other damage.

If you're old enough, you'll remember sentiments in the 80's and 90's where "Oh, you let your teen get a modem? He must be hacking/phreaking."

Or "Oh, he's using Linux? He must be using it to become a hacker."[1]

Most of the complaints I see on HN are from people who know little about it, and are going off negative press/posts. Just as people knew little about modems and Linux. I mean, having to tell people "Don't give it access to your emails" is a clear sign of their ignorance. Kind of like having to tell someone "OK, just don't give your 10 year old the car keys" when they complain that cars are inherently dangerous because 10 year olds can kill themselves driving it.

It's worth trying it in a secure environment so at least one can make an informed critique.

Like you, I steered clear of OpenClaw, seeing all the problems and all the money people were burning on tokens. But at some point, I decided I should at least try it in a safe way before rendering judgment. And now I see what it is. Has it done so much for me that I'd throw a lot of money at it? Heck no. Not yet at least. But I do see we're past the point of no return. OpenClaw itself may die, but some derivative of it is going to be transformational.

As I said: Make it secure, affordable, reliable and user friendly, and many App/SaaS services will disappear.

> You don’t need to use the technology to be affected by it. Ask Scott Shambaugh:

> https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on...

I don't know how old you are, but once everyone had a camera in their phones, the cat was out of the bag. Lots of people complaining about their photos showing up online because someone had taken a picture of them. Yes, this is bad. Yes, lives were lost (bullying, etc). And no, phones with cameras weren't going to go away. And everyone who complained has one now.

And as I pointed out a few days ago[2], the whole Scott Shambaugh episode was pretty mild compared to what some open source maintainers have had to deal with when it comes to humans.

[1] Lots of cases where ISPs, etc kicked customers out because they were using Linux and they didn't want the ISP to be implicated in criminal activities. "Only criminals use Linux"

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47083686