Again, it's been a long, long time since my last post. And the exponentially growing number of developments in AI is just overwhelming. I'm trying so hard not to write this blog post using the AI of your preference.

Personally, I'm currently digging Claude β€” they're coming up with amazing products and innovation. Three or four months ago I ended my ChatGPT subscription; its sub just stopped maintaining a differentiable value proposition. It's not that their models are bad or that they aren't leading frontier model developments and stuff, but their competitors are simply giving me much more. Claude offers Cowork and Claude Code, both of which you can start using with the Pro plan, and Google just offers a bunch of benefits and goodies, including Nano Banana Pro, Veo credits, a bunch of storage for Gmail/Drive, Gemini Pro usage, and much more. ChatGPT? Fine, thanks. But that's another blog post.

Now... OpenClaw. Frankly, completely genius but extremely dangerous. YouTubers and enthusiasts are obsessed with it. "I just automated my life; if you don't have at least 10 agents working for you, you're falling behind: a financial advisor, Steve: your family planner, Linda: your mindfulness coach, Adam: your crypto bruh that will take that wallet from 10 USDT to the moon." I get it, I get it.

I think OpenClaw is super innovative and it's what we needed and where we need to head, which is giving more agency to LLMs. Now your AI is able to automate stuff, create cron jobs, send emails, access the web, perform web3 transactions (crypto), and have endless memory. But at what cost?


First of all, you need a server; people are stocking up on Mac Minis. You can also rent a server in the cloud (VPS), and here you have your first point of failure. Making sure your system is hardened and well configured is a must β€” you need to make sure your OS has the latest patches, a correctly configured firewall, and SSH access locked down. I personally prefer going with the VPS route[1], since hosting your server in your local network potentially exposes you and your whole network to external attacks (unless you properly isolate it... more boilerplate and configuration). First red flag.

Clawy β€” yes, that's the name I gave to my OpenClaw assistant who would be my companion to take my game to the next level. Later, I thought Ishikawa would be a much better name. Setting it up was a pain in the ass, but I was finally able to start chatting with Ishi on Discord and making him send me regular inspiring quotes by Sir Isaac Newton.


Then you need to follow the so-called "best practices": don't give him access to your personal email, create a brand new WhatsApp account, etc. A totally flawed and misleading sense of protection. Come on β€” regardless of whether it starts from its own or a brand new account, you'll inevitably start sharing personal information with it and become completely vulnerable to injection attacks. Let's not forget that even if you've configured your lobster swarm with the latest frontier model, that doesn't mean they're not vulnerable. They are constantly exposed to external data and text, which are a perfect vehicle for attacks via WhatsApp messages, calendar invitations, incoming emails, and so on.

Hence, you need to further harden your agents by either limiting their interaction with these apps or enriching their prompt as much as possible to diminish the occurrence of these injection attacks β€” something that, in turn, paradoxically limits their agency.

I'm saddened to let you know that Ishikawa has passed. I'm still going to monitor the latest developments on this, but I'll stay with the late majority before embracing it. Claude has just released Dispatch, which precisely allows you to trigger tasks from your desktop. Big-LLM has also realized the powerful concept behind OpenClaw, and they'll industrialize it for sure. By then, I'm waiting for Ishikawa's awakening.

[1] By the way, if you're looking for a good, cost-efficient VPS alternative, I recommend Hetzner β€” they have very competitive pricing and you can get your lobster swarm up and running starting at 6 USD/month. ↩