#491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger
Episode publishedPodcast: Lex Fridman PodcastLex Fridman Podcast
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The following is a conversation with Peter Steinberger, creator of OpenClaw, formerly known as Moldbot, Clawdbot, Claudus, Claud, spelled with a w as in lobster claw. Not to be confused with Claude, the AI model from Anthropic spelled with a u. In fact, this confusion is the reason Anthropic kindly asked Peter to change the name to OpenClaw. So what is OpenClaw? It's an open source AI agent that has taken over the tech world in a matter of days, exploding in popularity, reaching over 180,000 stars on GitHub, and spawning the social network mold book where AI agents post manifestos and debate c
Yeah. And I I played around with some other things, like even stuff that gets all my WhatsApp, and I could just run queries on it. That was back when we had g p d 4.1. It was the 1,000,000 context window. And I I pulled in all the data and then to ask them questions like, what makes this friendship meaningful?
Mhmm.
And I got some some really profound results. Like, I sent it to my friends, and they got, like, teary eyes. So there's something there. Yeah. But then I I thought all the labs will will will work on that. So I I moved on to other things, and that was still very much in my early days of experimenting and playing. You know? You have to that's how you learn. You just, like, you do stuff and you play. And time flew by, it was November. I wanted to make sure that the thing I started is actually happening. I was annoyed that it didn't exist, so it just prompted it into existence.
I mean, that's the beginning of the hero's journey of the entrepreneur. Right? And you've even with your original story with PSPDF kit, it's like, why does this not exist? Let me build it. And again, here's diff whole different realm, but similar maybe spirit.
Yes. I had this problem. I tried to show PDF on an iPad, which should not be hard. This is like fifteen years ago, something like that. Yeah. Like the most the most random thing ever. Suddenly, I had this problem, and I I wanted to help a friend. And there was there was well, not like nothing existed, but it was just not good. I'm like like, I tried it, and it was, like, very meh. Like, I can do this better.
By the way, for people who don't know, this led to the development of PS PDF kit that's used on a billion devices. So the it turns out that it's pretty useful to be able to open a PDF. You
could also make the joke that I'm really bad at naming. Yeah. Name number five on the current project, and even PSPDF doesn't really roll from the tongue.
Anyway, so you said, screw it. Why don't I do it? So what was the what was the prototype? What was the thing that you what was the magical thing that you built in a short amount of time that you're like, this might actually work as an agent, or I talk to it and it does things?
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