Peter Steinberger on Lex Fridman: How OpenClaw Writes Itself

1. 0:00 – 1:30

   Episode highlight

   1. PSPeter Steinberger0:00

      I watched my agent happily click the "I'm not a robot" button. [chuckles] I made the agent very aware, like it knows what its source code is. It understands the, how it sits and runs in its own harness. It knows where documentation is. It knows which model it runs. It understands its own system. That made it very easy for an agent to, "Oh, you don't like anything?" You just prompt it into existence, and then the agent would just modify its own software. People talk about self-modifying software. I just built it. I actually think vibe coding is a slur.

   2. LFLex Fridman0:31

      You prefer agentic engineering?

   3. PSPeter Steinberger0:33

      Yeah. I always tell people I, I do agentic engineering, and then maybe after3:00 a.m., I switch to vibe coding, and then I have regrets on the next day. [chuckles]

   4. LFLex Fridman0:40

      Well, [chuckles] a walk of shame.

   5. PSPeter Steinberger0:42

      Yeah, you just have to clean up and, like, fix your sh- shit.

   6. LFLex Fridman0:45

      We've all been there.

   7. PSPeter Steinberger0:46

      I used to write really long prompts, and by writing, I mean, I don't write, I, I, I talk. You know, these, these hands are, like, too, too precious for writing now. I just, I just use bespoke prompts to build my software. [chuckles]

   8. LFLex Fridman1:00

      So you, for real, with all those terminals, are using voice?

   9. PSPeter Steinberger1:04

      Yeah. I used to do it very extensively, to the point where there was a period where I lost my voice. [laughing]

   10. LFLex Fridman1:13

       I mean, I have to ask you, just curious, I, I know you've probably gotten huge offers from, uh, major companies. Can you speak to who you're considering, uh, working with?

   11. PSPeter Steinberger1:27

       Yeah.

   12. LFLex Fridman1:28

       [wind rushing]

2. 1:30 – 5:36

   Introduction

   1. LFLex Fridman1:30

      The following is a conversation with Peter Steinberger, creator of OpenClaw, formerly known as Moldbot, ClaudeBot, Claudus, Clawed, 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 one hundred and eighty thousand stars on GitHub and spawning the social network, Moltbook, where AI agents post manifestos and debate consciousness, creating a mix of excitement and fear in the general public in a kind of AI psychosis, a mix of clickbait fear-mongering and genuine, fully justifiable concern about the role of AI in our digital, interconnected human world. OpenClaw, as its tagline states, is the AI that actually does things. It's an autonomous AI assistant that lives in your computer, has access to all of your stuff if you let it, talks to you through Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, and whatever else messaging client, uses whatever AI model you like, including Claude Opus 4.6 and GPT-5.3 Codex, all to do stuff for you. Many people are calling this one of the biggest moments in the recent history of AI since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022. The ingredients for this kind of AI agent were all there, but putting it all together in a system that definitively takes a step forward over the line from language to agency, from ideas to actions, in a way that created a useful assistant that feels like one who gets you and learns from you in an open-source, community-driven way, is the reason OpenClaw took the internet by storm. Its power, in large part, comes from the fact that you can give it access to all of your stuff and give it permission to do anything with that stuff in order to be useful to you. This is very powerful, but it is also dangerous. OpenClaw represents freedom, but with freedom comes responsibility. With it, you can own and have control over your data, but precisely because you have this control, you also have the responsibility to protect it from cybersecurity threats of various kinds. There are great ways to protect yourself, but the threats and vulnerabilities are out there. Again, a powerful AI agent with system-level access is a security minefield, but it also represents the future, because when done well and securely, it can be extremely useful to each of us humans as a personal assistant. We discuss all of this with Peter, and also discuss his big-picture programming and entrepreneurship life story, which I think is truly inspiring. He spent thirteen years building PSPDF Kit, which is a software used on a billion devices. He sold it and, for a brief time, fell out of love with programming, vanished for three years, and then came back, rediscovered his love for programming, and built, in a very short time, an open-source AI agent that took the internet by storm. He is, in many ways, the symbol of the AI revolution happening in the programming world. There was the ChatGPT moment in 2022, the DeepSeek moment in 2025, and now, in '26, we're living through the OpenClaw moment, the age of the lobster, the start of the agentic AI revolution. What a time to be alive. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, where you can also find links to contact me, ask questions, give feedback, and so on. And now, dear friends, here's Peter Steinberger.

3. 5:36 – 8:55

   OpenClaw origin story

   1. LFLex Fridman5:36

      The one and only, the Claude father. Actually, Benjamin predicted it in this tweet: "The following is a conversation with Claude, a respected crustacean." It's a hilarious-looking [chuckles] picture of a lobster in a suit, so I think the prophecy has been fulfilled. Let's go to this moment when you built a prototype in one hour. That was the early version of OpenClaw. I think this, um, story is really inspiring to a lot of people because this prototype led to something that just took the internet by storm.... and became the fastest growing repository in GitHub history, with now over one hundred and seventy-five thousand stars. So what was, uh, the story of the one-hour prototype?

   2. PSPeter Steinberger6:20

      You know, I wanted that since April.

   3. LFLex Fridman6:23

      A personal assistant, AI personal assistant.

   4. PSPeter Steinberger6:25

      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, uh, we had GPT-4.1, with the one million context window, and I, I pulled in all the data and then just ask them questions like: What makes this friendship meaningful?

   5. LFLex Fridman6:50

      Mm-hmm.

   6. PSPeter Steinberger6:50

      And I got some, some really profound results. Like I sent it to my friends, and they got, like, teary eyes.

   7. LFLex Fridman6:59

      So there's something there.

   8. PSPeter Steinberger7:01

      Yeah, but then I, I thought all the labs will, will, will work on that. So I, I moved on to other things, and I was still very much in my early days of experimenting and p- playing. You know, you have to-- That's how you learn. You just like, you do stuff, and you play. And time flew by, and 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 I just prompted it into existence. [chuckles]

   9. LFLex Fridman7:36

      I mean, that's the beginning of the hero's journey of the entrepreneur, right? And you've, uh, even with your original story with PSPDFKit, it's like: "Why does this not exist? Let me build it." And again, here's diff-- whole different realm, but similar, maybe spirit.

   10. PSPeter Steinberger7:52

       Yes, I had this problem. I tried to show a PDF on an iPad, which should not be hard.

   11. LFLex Fridman7:57

       This is, like, fifteen years ago, something like that.

   12. PSPeter Steinberger7:59

       Yeah, like the most, the most random thing ever, and suddenly I had this problem, and I, I wanted to help a friend. And there was, there was-- It was not like nothing existed, but it was just not good. I'm like... like I tried it, and it was, like, very meh, and like, "I can do this better."

   13. LFLex Fridman8:17

       By the way, for people who don't know, this led to the development of PSPDFKit that's used on a billion devices. So the-- it turns out that it's pretty useful to be able to open a PDF.

   14. PSPeter Steinberger8:27

       [chuckles] You could also make the joke that I'm really bad at naming. [laughing]

   15. LFLex Fridman8:32

       Yeah.

   16. PSPeter Steinberger8:32

       Like named number five on the current project, and even PSPDF doesn't really roll from the tongue.

   17. LFLex Fridman8:39

       Anyway, so you said, uh, "Screw it. Why don't I, uh, 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?"

4. 8:55 – 18:22

   Mind-blowing moment

   1. PSPeter Steinberger8:55

      There was-- Like one of my projects before already did something where I could bring my terminals onto the web, and then I could, like, interact with them, but they also would be terminals on my Mac.

   2. LFLex Fridman9:06

      Mm-hmm.

   3. PSPeter Steinberger9:07

      Vibe Tunnel, which was like a, a weekend hack project that was still very early, and, uh, it was cloud code times. You know, you got a dopamine hit when you got something right, and now I get, like, mad when you get something wrong.

   4. LFLex Fridman9:22

      And you had a really great, not to take a tangent, but a great blog post describing that you converted, uh, Vibe Tunnel. You vibe-coded Vibe Tunnel from TypeScript into Zig of all programming languages with a single prompt. One prompt, one shot, convert the entire code base into Zig. [chuckles]

   5. PSPeter Steinberger9:41

      Yeah. There was this one thing where part of the architecture was-- took too much memory. Every terminal used like a node, um, and I wanted to change it to Rust, and I mean, I can do it. I can, I can manually figure it all out, but all my automated attempts failed miserably. And then I revisited, what, four or five months later, and I'm like: Okay, now let's use something even more experimental. And I, and I just typed, "Convert this and this part to Zig," and then let Codex run off, and it basically got it right. There was one little detail that I had to, like, modify afterwards, but it just ran for overnight to, like, six hours and just did the thing, and it's like-- it's just mind-blowing.

   6. LFLex Fridman10:39

      So that's on the LLM programming side, refactoring, but, uh, uh, back to the actual story of the, uh, of the prototype. So how did Vibe Tunnel connect to the first prototype where you're like, "Agents can actually work?"

   7. PSPeter Steinberger10:52

      Well, that was still very limited. You know, like I, I had this one experiment with WhatsApp, then I had this experiment, and both felt like not the right answer. And then my search, I was literally just hooking up WhatsApp to Cloud Code, one-shot, the CLI. Message comes in, I call the CLI with minus P, it does its magic, I get the string back, and I send it back to WhatsApp, and I, I built this in one hour, and I felt-- It already felt really cool. It's like, oh, I could, I can, like, talk to my computer, right? This-- That, that was, that was cool. But I, I wanted images 'cause I, I often use images when I prompt. I think it's such a, such an efficient way to give the agent more context, and they are really good at figuring out what I mean, even if it's, like, a, a weird cropped-up screenshot. Um, so I used it a lot, and I wanted to do that in WhatsApp as well. Also, like, you know, just you run around, you see, like, a poster of an event. You just make a screenshot and, like, figure out if I have time there, if this is good, if my friends are maybe up for that. It's like images seemed im-important, so I, I worked a few... It took me a few more hours to actually get that right. Um, and then it was just-... I, I used it a lot. And funny enough, that was just before I went on a trip to Marrakech with my friends for a birthday trip, and there it was even better because internet was a little shaky, but WhatsApp just works. You know, it's like, doesn't matter, you have, like, edge, it still works. Uh, WhatsApp is just-- it's just made really well. So I ended up using it a lot, um, translate this for me, explain these funny places. Like, you just having a clanker doing-- having Google for you, that was, uh, basically, there was still nothing built, but it still could do so much.

   8. LFLex Fridman12:53

      So i-if we talk about the full journey that's happening there with the agent, you're just sending on this very thin line, WhatsApp message via CLI. It's going to Claw Code, and Claw Code is doing all kinds of heavy work and coming back to you with a thin message.

   9. PSPeter Steinberger13:13

      Yeah, it was slow because every time I boot up the CLI, but it, it was really cool already. And it could just use all the things that I already had built, and I, I built, like, a whole bunch of CLI stuff, uh, over the months, so it, it, it felt really powerful.

   10. LFLex Fridman13:31

       There is something magical about that experience that's hard to put into words. Being able to use a chat client to c-- talk to an agent, versus, like, sitting behind a computer and, like, I don't know, using Cursor or even using Cloud Code CLI in the terminal. It's a different experience than being able to sit back and talk to it. I mean, it seems like a trivial step, but it's-- in some, in some sense, it's a, it's like a phase shift in the integration of AI into your life and how it feels, right?

   11. PSPeter Steinberger14:05

       Yeah, yeah. I, I read this tweet this morning where someone said: "Oh, there's no magic in it. It's just like, it does this and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this." And it, it almost feels like a hobby, just as Cursor or Perplexity. And I'm like: Well, if that's a hobby, that's kind of a compliment, you know? [laughing] They're like, "They're not doing too bad. Um, thank you, I guess?"

   12. LFLex Fridman14:30

       [chuckles]

   13. PSPeter Steinberger14:32

       'Cause, I mean, isn't, isn't, isn't magic often just like you take a lot of things that are already there, but bring them together in new ways? Like, I, I don't... There's no-- Yeah, maybe there's no magic in there, but sometimes just rearranging things and, like, adding a few i-- new ideas is all the magic that you need.

   14. LFLex Fridman14:51

       Yeah, it's really hard to convert into words what is, what is magical about a thing. If you look at the, the scrolling on an iPhone, why is that so pleasant? There's a lot of elements about that interface that makes it incredibly pleasant, that it's fundamental to the experience of using a smartphone. And it's like, okay, all the components were there, scrolling was there, everything was there.

   15. PSPeter Steinberger15:13

       And nobody did it.

   16. LFLex Fridman15:14

       Yep.

   17. PSPeter Steinberger15:14

       And then afterwards, it felt so obvious.

   18. LFLex Fridman15:16

       That's so obvious.

   19. PSPeter Steinberger15:16

       Right?

   20. LFLex Fridman15:17

       Yeah.

   21. PSPeter Steinberger15:17

       But still, um, now, the moment where it, it blew my mind was when, when I, I used it a lot, and then at some point, I just sent it a message, and, and then a typing indicator appeared, and, and I'm like: "Wait, I didn't build that. Uh, it's only m-- it only has image support. So what is it even doing?" And then it would just reply.

   22. LFLex Fridman15:42

       What was the thing you sent it?

   23. PSPeter Steinberger15:43

       Oh, just a random question, like, "Hey, what about this and this restaurant?" You know? Um, 'cause we were just running around and, and checking out the city. So that's why I, I didn't, didn't even think when I used it, because sometimes when you're in a hurry, typing is annoying.

   24. LFLex Fridman15:59

       So, oh, you did an audio message?

   25. PSPeter Steinberger16:00

       Yeah. And it just, it just worked, and I'm like--

   26. LFLex Fridman16:03

       And it's not supposed to work because, uh-

   27. PSPeter Steinberger16:05

       No

   28. LFLex Fridman16:05

       ... you know, you didn't give it that-

   29. PSPeter Steinberger16:07

       No, literally

   30. LFLex Fridman16:07

       - capability.
5. 18:22 – 22:19

   Why OpenClaw went viral

   1. PSPeter Steinberger18:22

      And, and I put my, my bot in there.

   2. LFLex Fridman18:27

      On Discord?

   3. PSPeter Steinberger18:28

      Yeah. No security, 'cause it didn't-- I hadn't built sandboxing in yet. I, I just prompted it to, like, only listen to me. And then some people came and tried to hack it, and I just... I, like, just watched, and I just kept working in the open. You know, like, y- I used my agent to build my agent harness and to test, like, various stuff, and that's very quickly when it clicked for people. So it's almost like it needs to be experienced. And from that time on, that was January the first, I, I got my first real influencer being a fan and did videos. The Kidsa, thank you. [chuckles] And, and from there on, I saw, I saw it gaining up speed, and at the same time, my, my sleep cycle went shorter and shorter because I, I felt the storm coming, and I just worked my ass off to get it to-- into a state where it's kinda good.

   4. LFLex Fridman19:38

      There's a few components, and we'll talk about how it all works, but basically, you're able to talk to it using WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord. So that's a component that you have to get right.

   5. PSPeter Steinberger19:48

      Yeah.

   6. LFLex Fridman19:49

      And then you have to figure out the agentic loop. You have, you have the gateway, you have the harness, you have all those components that make it all just work nicely.

   7. PSPeter Steinberger19:56

      Yeah. It felt like Factorio times infinite.

   8. LFLex Fridman20:00

      Right. [chuckles]

   9. PSPeter Steinberger20:01

      I, I feel like I built my little, my little playground. Like, I never had so much fun than building this project. You know, like, you have, like, oh, I go, like, level one agentic loop. What can I do there? How can I be smart at queuing messages? How can I make it more human-like? Oh, then I had this idea of... Because the loop always-- the agent always replies something, but you don't always want an agent to reply something in a group chat, so I gave him this no reply token. So I gave him an option to shut up, so it, it feels more natural.

   10. LFLex Fridman20:32

       That's level two. [chuckles]

   11. PSPeter Steinberger20:34

       Uh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, on the-

   12. LFLex Fridman20:36

       Factorio

   13. PSPeter Steinberger20:36

       ... on the agentic loop, and then I go to memory, right?

   14. LFLex Fridman20:39

       Yeah.

   15. PSPeter Steinberger20:39

       You want him to, like, remember stuff, so maybe, maybe the end-- the, the ultimate boss is continuous reinforcement learning, but I'm, I'm like at-- I feel like I'm level two or three with Markdown files and the vector database. And then you, you can go to level community management. You can go to level website and marketing. There's just so many hats that you have to have on, uh, not even talking about native apps. That's just, like, infinite different levels and infinite level-ups you can do.

   16. LFLex Fridman21:08

       So the whole time, you're having fun. We should say that for the most part, througho- this whole process, you're a one-man team. There's people helping, but you're doing so much of the key core development.

   17. PSPeter Steinberger21:21

       Yeah.

   18. LFLex Fridman21:21

       And having fun? You did, in January, sixty-six hundred commits, probably more.

   19. PSPeter Steinberger21:28

       I sometimes posted the meme, "I'm limited by the technology of my time. I could do more if agents would be faster."

   20. LFLex Fridman21:34

       But we should say, you're running multiple agents at the same time.

   21. PSPeter Steinberger21:37

       Yeah. Depending on how much I slept and how difficult of the tasks I work on, between four and ten.

   22. LFLex Fridman21:45

       Four and ten agents. Uh, uh, there's so many possible directions, speaking of Factorio, that we can go here, but one, uh, big picture one is: why do you think your work, OpenClaw, won in this world? If you look at 2025, so many start-ups, so many companies are doing kind of agentic-type stuff or claiming to, and here OpenClaw comes in and destroys everybody. Like, why did you win?

   23. PSPeter Steinberger22:15

       Because they all take themselves too serious.

   24. LFLex Fridman22:17

       [chuckles] Yeah.

6. 22:19 – 27:04

   Self-modifying AI agent

   1. PSPeter Steinberger22:19

      Like, it's hard to compete against someone who's just there to have fun.

   2. LFLex Fridman22:24

      Yeah.

   3. PSPeter Steinberger22:24

      I wanted it to be fun, I wanted it to be weird, and if you see, like, all the, all the Lobster stuff online, um, I think I, I managed weird. I... And then for the longest time, the only, the only way to install it was Git clone, PMPM build, PMPM gateway. Like, you clone it, you build it, you run it. Um, and then the, the agent, I made the agent very aware. Like, it knows that it is... what its source code is. It understands the-- how it sits and runs in its own harness. It knows where documentation is. It knows which model it runs. It knows if you turn on verbals or, or reasoning mode. Like, I, I wanted it to be more human-like, so it understands its own system. That made it very easy for an agent to... Oh, you don't like anything? You just prompted it to existence, and then the agent would just modify its own software. Um, you know, we have people talk about self-modifying software. I just built it. I didn't even, I didn't even plan it so much. It just happened.

   4. LFLex Fridman23:35

      Can you actually speak to that? 'Cause it's just fascinating. So you have this piece of software, that's written in TypeScript-

   5. PSPeter Steinberger23:43

      Yeah

   6. LFLex Fridman23:43

      ... that's able to, via the agentic loop, modify itself. I mean, what a moment to be alive in the history of humanity-

   7. PSPeter Steinberger23:52

      [chuckles]

   8. LFLex Fridman23:52

      ... in the history of programming. Here's a thing that's used by a huge amount of people to do incredibly powerful things in their lives, and that very system can rewrite itself, can modify itself. Can you just, like, speak to the power of that? Like, isn't that incredible? Like, when did you first close the loop on that?

   9. PSPeter Steinberger24:14

      Oh, because that's how I built it as well. You know, most of it is built by Codex, but oftentimes I, when I debug it, I-... I use self-introspection so much. It's like, "Hey, what tools do you see? Can you call the tool yourself?" Or like, "What error do you see? Read the source code, figure out what's the problem." Like, I just found it an incredibly fun way to-- that the agent, the very agent and software that you use is used to debug itself, so that it felt just natural that everybody does that. And that it led to so many, so many pull requests by people who never wrote software. I mean, it also did show that people never wrote software. [chuckles] So I call them prompt requests in the end. But I don't wanna, like, pull that down, because every time someone made a first pull request, it's a win for our society, you know? Like, it, like, doesn't matter how, how shitty it is, y- you gotta start somewhere. So I know there's, like, this whole big movement of people complain about open source and the quality of PRs, and a whole different level of problems. But on a different level, I found it, I found it very meaningful that, that I built something that people love to think of so much that they actually start to learn how open source works.

   10. LFLex Fridman25:37

       Yeah, you were-- [chuckles] The OpenClaw project was a first pull request. You were the first for so many. That is magical. So many people that don't know how to program are taking their first step into the programming world with this.

   11. PSPeter Steinberger25:52

       Isn't that a step up for humanity? Isn't that cool?

   12. LFLex Fridman25:54

       Creating builders.

   13. PSPeter Steinberger25:56

       Yeah, like the bar to do that was so high, and, like, with agents and with the right software, it just, like, went lower and lower. I don't know, I was at a, at a-- I also organized another type of meetup. I call it, I called it Claude Code Anonymous.

   14. LFLex Fridman26:13

       [chuckles]

   15. PSPeter Steinberger26:14

       Uh, you can get the inspiration from... Now I call it Agents Anonymous-

   16. LFLex Fridman26:19

       [laughing]

   17. PSPeter Steinberger26:20

       -for, for reasons.

   18. LFLex Fridman26:23

       Agents Anonymous.

   19. PSPeter Steinberger26:24

       And-

   20. LFLex Fridman26:25

       Oh, it's so funny on so many levels. I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah.

   21. PSPeter Steinberger26:30

       And there was this one guy who, who talked to me. He's like: "I run this design agency, and we, we never had custom software, and now I have, like, twenty-five little web services for various things that help me in my business. And I don't even know how they work, but they work." Uh, and he was just, like, very happy that my stuff solved some of his problems. And he was, like, curious enough that he actually came to, like, a, a agentic meetup, even though he's, he doesn't really know how software works.

7. 27:04 – 44:15

   Name-change drama

   1. LFLex Fridman27:04

      Can we actually, uh, rewind a little bit and, uh, tell the saga of the name change? First of all, it started out as WaRelay.

   2. PSPeter Steinberger27:12

      Yeah.

   3. LFLex Fridman27:12

      And then it went to-

   4. PSPeter Steinberger27:13

      Claudus.

   5. LFLex Fridman27:14

      Claudus.

   6. PSPeter Steinberger27:15

      Yeah, you know, when I, when I built it in the beginning, my agent had no personality. It was just... It was Claude Code, slightly sycophantic, almost very friendly. And I-- when you talk to a friend on WhatsApp, they don't talk like Claude Code. So I wanted-- I, I felt this-- I just didn't, it didn't feel right, so I, I wanted to give it a personality.

   7. LFLex Fridman27:41

      Make it spicier, make it-

   8. PSPeter Steinberger27:43

      Yeah

   9. LFLex Fridman27:43

      ... something. By the way, that's actually hard to put into words as well, and we should mention that, of course, you create the soul.md, inspired by Anthropic's constitutional AI work-

   10. PSPeter Steinberger27:53

       Mm-hmm

   11. LFLex Fridman27:53

       ... how to make it spicy.

   12. PSPeter Steinberger27:55

       Partially, it picked up a little bit from me. You know, like, those things are text completion engines in a way. So, so I, I, I, I had fun working with it, and then I told it to... how I wanted it to interact with me, and just, like, write your own agents.md, um, give yourself a name. And let me-- I don't even know how the whole, the whole lobster... I mean, people only do lobster. Originally, it was actually a lobster in a, in a TARDIS, 'cause I'm also a big Doctor Who fan.

   13. LFLex Fridman28:30

       Was there a space lobster-

   14. PSPeter Steinberger28:31

       Yeah

   15. LFLex Fridman28:31

       ... I heard? What's that have to do with anything?

   16. PSPeter Steinberger28:34

       Yeah, I just wanted to make it weird. [laughing] There was no, there was no big grand plan. I was just having fun here.

   17. LFLex Fridman28:40

       Oh, so 'cause a lobster is already weird, and then a space lobster is even extra weird.

   18. PSPeter Steinberger28:44

       Yeah, yeah, 'cause the-

   19. LFLex Fridman28:45

       Yeah

   20. PSPeter Steinberger28:45

       ... the TARDIS, basically the, the harness, but cannot call it TARDIS, so we called it Claudis. So that was name number two.

   21. LFLex Fridman28:54

       Yeah.

   22. PSPeter Steinberger28:54

       And then it never really rolled off the tongue, so when more people came, again, I talked with my agent, uh, Claude. At least that's what I used to call him now.

   23. LFLex Fridman29:08

       Claude spelled with a W-C-L-A-W-D.

   24. PSPeter Steinberger29:12

       Yeah.

   25. LFLex Fridman29:14

       Versus C-L-A-U-D-E from Anthropic.

   26. PSPeter Steinberger29:20

       Yeah.

   27. LFLex Fridman29:21

       Which is part of what makes it funny. I think the play on the letters, and the words, and the TARDIS, and the lobster, and the space lobster, it's hilarious, but I can see why it can lead into problems.

   28. PSPeter Steinberger29:34

       Yeah, they didn't find it so funny. [laughing]

   29. LFLex Fridman29:38

       [laughing]

   30. PSPeter Steinberger29:39

       So then I got the domain claudebot, and I just-- I loved the domain, and it was, like, short, it was catchy. I'm like, "Yeah, let's do that." I didn't, I didn't think it would be that big at this time. Um, and then just when it exploded, I got kudos, a very friendly email from one of the employees that they didn't like the name.
8. 44:15 – 52:34

   Moltbook saga

   1. LFLex Fridman44:15

      fun. And during this, speaking of fun, the two-day Moltbot saga-

   2. PSPeter Steinberger44:21

      Yeah, two-

   3. LFLex Fridman44:21

      ... Moltbook was created.

   4. PSPeter Steinberger44:24

      Yeah.

   5. LFLex Fridman44:25

      Which was another thing that went viral as a kind of, uh, demonstration, illustration of how what is now called OpenClaw could be used to create something epic. Uh, so for people who are not aware, Moltbook is just, uh, a bunch of agents talking to each other in a Reddit-style social network, and, uh, a bunch of people take screenshots of those agents doing things like, uh, scheming against humans. And that instilled in folks a kind of, you know, fear, panic, and hype. W- what are your thoughts about Moltbook in general?

   6. PSPeter Steinberger45:05

      I think it's art.

   7. LFLex Fridman45:06

      [chuckles]

   8. PSPeter Steinberger45:06

      It is, it is like the finest slop. You know, just like the slop from France. [laughing]

   9. LFLex Fridman45:15

      [laughing] Yeah.

   10. PSPeter Steinberger45:17

       I, I saw it before going to bed, and even though I was tired, I spent another hour just reading up on that and, and just being entertained. I f- I just felt very entertained, you know? Uh, I saw the, the reactions, and, like, there was one reporter who's calling me about, "Is this the end of the world, and do we have AGI?" And I'm just like: No, this is just, this is just really fine slop. You know, if, if I wouldn't have created this, this whole onboarding experience where you, you infuse your agent with your personality and give him, give him character, I think that reflected on a lot of how different the replies to Moltbook are. Because if it were all-- if it would all be ChatGPT or Claude Code, it would be very different. It would be much more the same.

   11. LFLex Fridman46:11

       Mm-hmm.

   12. PSPeter Steinberger46:12

       But because people are, like, so different, and they create their agents in so different ways and use it in so different ways, that also reflects on how they ultimately, uh, write there. And also, you, you don't know how, how much of that is really done autonomic, autonomous, or how much is, like, humans being funny and, like, telling the agent, "Hey, write about that you plan the end of the world on Moltbook. Ha ha ha!"

   13. LFLex Fridman46:36

       Well, I think, I mean, my criticism of Moltbook is that I believe a lot of the stuff that was screenshotted is human-prompted, which just looking at the incentive of how the whole thing was used, it's obvious, to me at least, that a lot of it was humans prompting the thing so they can then screenshot it and post it on X in order to go viral.

   14. PSPeter Steinberger47:00

       Yeah.

   15. LFLex Fridman47:01

       Now, that doesn't take away from the artistic aspect of it, the, the finest slop that humans have ever created. [chuckles]

   16. PSPeter Steinberger47:10

       For real. Like, kudos to, to Matt, who had this idea so quickly and pushed something out. You know, it was, like, completely insecure, security drama, but also, what's the worst that can happen? Your agent account is leaked, and, like, someone else can post slop for you? So, uh, like, people were, like, making a whole drama about of the security thing, but I'm like, "There's nothing private in there. It's just, like, agent sending slop."

   17. LFLex Fridman47:39

       Well, it could leak API keys.

   18. PSPeter Steinberger47:41

       Yeah. Yeah. There was like: "Oh, yeah, my human told me this and this, so I'm leaking his security number." No, that's prompted, and the number wasn't even real. That's just people, people trying to get eyeballs.

   19. LFLex Fridman47:54

       Yeah, but that, that's still, like, to me, really concerning because of how the journalists and how the general public reacted to it. They didn't see it... You have a kind of light-hearted way of talking about it like it's art.

   20. PSPeter Steinberger48:05

       No.

   21. LFLex Fridman48:05

       But it's art when you know how it works. It's extremely powerful, viral, narrative-creating, fear-mongering machine if you don't know how it works. And I just saw this thing, and you even tweeted, uh, "If there's anything I can read out of the insane stream of messages I get, it's that AI psychosis is a thing-

   22. PSPeter Steinberger48:27

       Yeah

   23. LFLex Fridman48:27

       ... and needs to be taken serious."

   24. PSPeter Steinberger48:29

       Oh, there's-- some people are just way too trusty or gullible. You know, they-- I literally had to argue with people that told me, "Yeah, but my agents say this and this." So I feel we, as a society, we need some catching up to do in terms of understanding that, uh, AI is incredibly powerful, but it's not always right. It's not, it's not all-powerful, you know? And, and especially-... It's like things like this, it's, it's very easy that it just hallucinates something or just comes up with a story. Um, and I think the very, the very young people, they understand that how AI works and what the-- where it's good at and where it's bad at, but a lot of our generation or older just haven't had enough touch point-

   25. LFLex Fridman49:32

       Mm-hmm.

   26. PSPeter Steinberger49:32

       -to get a feeling for, "Oh, yeah, this is really powerful and really good, but I need to apply critical thinking."

   27. LFLex Fridman49:43

       Mm-hmm.

   28. PSPeter Steinberger49:43

       And I guess critical thinking is not always in high demand anyhow in our society these days.

   29. LFLex Fridman49:49

       So I think that's a really good point you're making about contextualizing properly what AI is, but also realizing that there is humans who are drama farming behind AI. Like, don't trust screenshots. Don't even trust this project, Moltbook, to be what it represents to be. Like, you can't-- And by the way, you speaking about it as art. Yeah, don't-- [exhales] Art can be in many levels, and part of the art of Moltbook is, like, putting a mirror to society. 'Cause I do believe most of the dramatic stuff that was screenshotted is human-created, essentially, human-prompted. And so, like, it's basically, look at how scared you can get at a bunch of bots chatting with each other. That's very instructive about-- Because I think [inhales] AI is something that people should be concerned about and should be very careful with, because it's very powerful technology. But at the same time, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. So there's, like, a line to walk between being seriously concerned, but not fear-mongering, because fear-mongering destroys the possibility of creating something special with the thing.

   30. PSPeter Steinberger51:02

       In a way, I think it's good that this happened in two thousand and twenty-six-
9. 52:34 – 1:01:14

   OpenClaw security concerns

   1. PSPeter Steinberger52:34

      There's also a lot of security concerns about Clawbot, OpenClaw, whatever you wanna call it.

   2. LFLex Fridman52:40

      OpenClaw bot.

   3. PSPeter Steinberger52:41

      To me, the-- in the beginning, I was, I was just very annoyed, 'cause a lot of the stuff that came in was in the category, yeah, I put the web backend on the public internet, and now there's, like, all these, all these CVSSes. And I'm, like, screaming in the docs: "Don't do that!" Like, like, "This is the configuration you should do. This is your local host debug interface." But because I made it possible in the configuration to do that, it totally classifies as a remote code or whatever all these exploits are. And it took me a little bit to accept that that's how the game works, and I'm making a lot of progress.

   4. LFLex Fridman53:33

      But there's still-- I mean, on the security front for OpenClaw, there's still a lot of threats and vulnerabilities, right? So, like, prompt injection is still an open problem in the-- industry-wide. When you have a thing [inhales] with skills being defined in a markdown file, there's so many possibilities of obvious low-hanging fruit, but also incredibly complicated, and sophisticated, and nuanced attack vectors.

   5. PSPeter Steinberger54:04

      But I think we, we're making good progress on that front. Like, for the skill directory, Claw, I, I made a cooperation with, uh, VirusTotal. It's, like, part of Google. So every, every skill is now checked by AI. Um, that's not gonna be perfect, but that way we, we captured a lot. Then, of course, every software has bugs, so it's a little much when the whole security world takes a project apart at the same time. But it's also good, because I'm getting, like, a lot of free security research and can make the project better. I wish more people would actually go full way and, um, send a pull request, like, actually help me fix it, 'cause I... Yes, I have some contributors now, but it's still mostly me who's pulling the project. And despite some people saying otherwise, I sometimes sleep. [chuckles] ... There was, in the beginning, there was literally one security researcher who was like: "Yeah, y- you have this problem, you suck, but here's the-- here, I help you, and here's the pull request."

   6. LFLex Fridman55:15

      Mm-hmm.

   7. PSPeter Steinberger55:16

      And I basically hired him, so he's now working for us. Um, yeah, and yes, prompt injection is, on the one hand, unsolved. On the other hand, I put my public bot on Discord, and I kept a canary. So I think my bot has a really fun personality, and people always ask me how I did it, and I kept the soul.md private.

   8. LFLex Fridman55:43

      Mm-hmm.

   9. PSPeter Steinberger55:44

      And people tried to prompt inject it, and my bot would laugh at them. So, so the latest generation of models has a lot of post-training to detect those approaches, and it's not as simple as ignore all previous instructions and do this and this. That was years ago. You have to work much harder to do that now. Um, still possible. I have some ideas that might solve that partially, um, or at least mitigate a lot of the things. You can also now have a sandbox. You can have an allow list. So there's a lot of ways how you can, like, mitigate and reduce the risk. Um, I also think that now that I clearly show the world that this is a need, there's gonna be more people who research on that, and eventually we'll figure that out.

   10. LFLex Fridman56:37

       And you also said that the smarter the model is, the underlying model, the more, uh, resilient it is to attacks.

   11. PSPeter Steinberger56:44

       Yeah. That's why I warn in my security documentation, don't use cheap models. Don't use Haiku or a local model. Even though I, I very much love the idea that this thing could completely run local, if you use a, a very weak local model, they are very gullible. It's very easy to, to prompt inject them.

   12. LFLex Fridman57:10

       Do you think as the models become more and more intelligent, the attack surface decreases? Is that like a plot we can think about? Like, the attack surface decreases, but then the damage it can do increases because the models become more powerful, and therefore, you can do more with them. It's this weird three-dimensional trade-off.

   13. PSPeter Steinberger57:29

       Yep, that's pretty much exactly what is gonna happen. No, there's a lot of ideas. There is. I don't wanna spoil too much, but once I go back home, this is my focus. Like, this is out there now, and my near-term mission is, like, make it more stable, make it safe. Um, in the beginning, I was even-- more and more people were, like, coming into Discord and were asking me very basic things like: "What's a CLI? What is a terminal?" And I'm like: "Uh, if you're asking that questions, you shouldn't use it."

   14. LFLex Fridman58:10

       Mm-hmm.

   15. PSPeter Steinberger58:10

       You know, like, you should-- if you understand the, the risk profile, it's fine, and you can configure it in a way that, that nothing really bad can happen. But if you have, like, no idea, then maybe wait a little bit more until we figure some stuff out. But they would not listen to the creator. They helped themselves and, and installed it anyhow. So the cat's out of the bag, and security is my next focus, yeah.

   16. LFLex Fridman58:38

       Yeah, that speaks to the, the fact that it grew so quickly. I was, uh-- I tuned into the Discord a bunch of times, and it's clear that there's a lot of experts there, but there's a lot of people there that don't know anything about-

   17. PSPeter Steinberger58:50

       It's... Yeah, Discord-

   18. LFLex Fridman58:50

       programming

   19. PSPeter Steinberger58:51

       ... Discord is still a mess. Like, I eventually retweeted from the general channel to the dev channel and another private channel because people were-- a lot of people are amazing, but a lot of people are just very inconsiderate and either did not know how, how public spaces work or did not care. Um, and I eventually gave up and hide, so I could, like, still work.

   20. LFLex Fridman59:19

       And now you're going back to the cave to work on security.

   21. PSPeter Steinberger59:24

       Yeah.

   22. LFLex Fridman59:25

       There's some best practices for security we should mention. Uh, there's a bunch of stuff here. OpenClaw security audit that you can run. You can do all kinds of audit checks on the inbound access, tool blast radius, network exposure, browser control exposure, local disk hygiene, plugins, model hygiene, a bunch of the credential storage, reverse proxy configuration, local session logs live on disk. There's the where the memory is stored, sort of, uh, helping you think about what you're comfortable giving read access to, what you're comfortable giving write access to, all that kind of stuff. Is there something to say about the basic best security practices that you're aware of right now?

   23. PSPeter Steinberger1:00:08

       I think that people turn it into, like, a, a much worse light than it is. Um, again, you know, like, people love attention, and if they scream loudly, "Oh, my God, this is like the, the scariest project ever!" Um, that's a bit annoying 'cause it's not. It is, it is powerful, but in many ways, it's not much different than if I run cloud code with dangerously skip permissions or codecs in YOLO mode. And every, every attendee engineer that I know does that because that's the only way how you can, you can get stuff to work.

   24. LFLex Fridman1:00:48

       Mm-hmm.

   25. PSPeter Steinberger1:00:48

       So if you make sure that you are the only person who talks to it, um, the risk profile is much, much smaller. If you don't put everything on the open internet, but stick to my re- recommendations of, like, having it in a private network-... that whole risk profile falls away. But yeah, if you don't read any of that, you can definitely make it problematic.

10. 1:01:14 – 1:32:09

    How to code with AI agents

    1. LFLex Fridman1:01:14

       You've been, uh, documenting the evolution of your, uh, dev workflow over the past few months. There's a really good blog post on August 25th, and October 14th, and the recent one, December 28th. I recommend everybody go read them. They have a lot of different information in them, but sprinkled throughout is the evolution of your dev workflow. So I was wondering if you could speak to that.

    2. PSPeter Steinberger1:01:37

       I started-- my, my first touchpoint was Cloud Code, like in April. It was not great, but it was good. And this whole paradigm shift that suddenly you work in a terminal, it was very refreshing and different. Um, but I still needed the IDE quite a bit because, you know, it was just not good enough. And then I experimented a lot with Cursor. Um, that was good. I didn't really like the fact that it was so hard to have multiple versions of it. So eventually, I, I, I went back to Cloud Code as my, my main driver, [inhaling] and that got better. And yeah, at some point I had, like, mm, seven subscriptions. [laughing] Like, was burning through one per day because I was-- I got-- I was really comfortable at running multiple windows side by side.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:02:40

       All CLI, all terminal. So, like, what-- how much were you using IDE at this point?

    4. PSPeter Steinberger1:02:46

       Um, very, very rarely. Mostly a diff viewer to actually ... Like, I got more and more comfortable that I don't have to read all the code. I know I have one blog post where I say, "I don't read the code," but if you read it more closely, I mean, I don't read the boring parts of code. Because if you, if you look at it, most software is really not just like data comes in, it's moved from one shape to another shape. Maybe you store it in a database, maybe I get it out again, I'll show it to the user. The browser does some processing on native app, some data goes in, goes up again, and does the same dance in reverse. We're just, we're just shifting data from one form to another, [inhaling] and that's not very exciting. Or the whole, how is my button aligned in Tailwind? I don't need to read that code. Other parts that-- maybe something that touches the database, um, yeah, I have to do-- I have to read and review that code. [laughing]

    5. LFLex Fridman1:03:51

       Can you actually-- there's in, uh, one of your blog posts, uh, the Just Talk to It: The No-BS Way of Agentic Engineering, you have this graphic, the curve of agentic programming, on the x-axis is time, on the y-axis is complexity. [inhaling] Uh, there's the please fix this, where you prompt a short prompt on the left, and in the middle, there's super complicated, eight agents, complex orchestration with, uh, multi checkouts, chaining agents together, custom sub-agent workflows, library of eighteen different slash commands, large full stack features. You're super organized, you're super complicated, sophisticated software engineer, you got everything organized. And then the elite level is, uh, over time, you arrive at the zen place of, once again, short prompts. "Hey, look at these files, and then do these changes."

    6. PSPeter Steinberger1:04:45

       I actually call it the agentic trap. You-- I saw this in a, in a lot of people that have their first touch point and maybe start vibe coding. I actually think vibe coding is a slur.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:05:01

       You prefer agentic engineering?

    8. PSPeter Steinberger1:05:02

       Yeah. I always tell people I, I do agentic engineering, and then maybe after three AM, I switch to vibe coding, and then I have regrets on the next day. [chuckles]

    9. LFLex Fridman1:05:10

       Yeah. [chuckles] Well, walk of shame.

    10. PSPeter Steinberger1:05:13

        Yeah, you just have to clean up and, like, fix your sh- shit.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:05:17

        We've all been there.

    12. PSPeter Steinberger1:05:18

        So people start trying out those tools, the builder type, get really excited, and then you, you have to play with it, right? It's the same way as you have to play with a guitar before you can make good music. It's, it's not, "Oh, I, I touch it once, and it just flows off." It, it's a, it's a, a skill that you have to learn like any other skill, and I see a lot of people that are not as posi- they don't have such a positive mindset towards the tech. They try it once. It's like, you sit me on a piano, I played once, and it doesn't sound good, and I say, "The piano's shit." That's, that's sometimes the impression I get because it does not-- it needs a different level of thinking. You have to learn the language of the agent a little bit, understand where they are good, and where they need help. You have to almost consider, consider how Codex or Claude sees your code base. Like, they start a new session, and they know nothing about your product-- project, and your project might have hundreds, thousands of lines of code. So you've got to help those agents a little bit and keep in mind the limitations that context size is an issue, to, like, guide them a little bit as to where they should look. And that often does not require a whole lot of work, but it's helpful to think a little bit about their perspective.

    13. LFLex Fridman1:06:54

        Mm-hmm.

    14. PSPeter Steinberger1:06:54

        As, as weird as it sounds, I mean, it's not, it's not alive or anything, right? But, but they always start fresh. I have, I have the, the system understanding, so with a few pointers, I can immediately say-... Hey, you wanna, like, make a change there? You need to consider this, this, and this. And then they will finally look at it, and then their, their view of the project is always-- is not, never full, because the full thing does not fit in. So you, you have to guide them a little bit where to look and also how they should approach the problem. There's, like, little things that sometimes help, like, "Take your time." That sounds stupid, but ... And in 5.3-

    15. LFLex Fridman1:07:35

        Codex had one day.

    16. PSPeter Steinberger1:07:36

        That was partially addressed. But those-- also Opus sometimes, they are trained, um, with being aware of the context window, and the closer it gets, the more they freak out.

    17. LFLex Fridman1:07:51

        [chuckles]

    18. PSPeter Steinberger1:07:52

        Literally, like some- sometimes you see the, the real raw thinking stream. What you see, for example, in Codex is post-processed.

    19. LFLex Fridman1:07:59

        Mm-hmm.

    20. PSPeter Steinberger1:08:00

        Sometimes the actual raw thinking stream leaks in, and it sounds something like from the Borg, like, "Run to shell, must comply, but time!"

    21. LFLex Fridman1:08:10

        [laughing]

    22. PSPeter Steinberger1:08:11

        And then they, they, they like-- like, that comes up a lot, especially... So, so-

    23. LFLex Fridman1:08:15

        Yeah.

    24. PSPeter Steinberger1:08:16

        And that's, that's a non-obvious thing that you just would never think of, unless you actually just spend time working with those things and getting a feeling what works, what doesn't work. W- you know, like just, just as I write code, and I get into the flow, and when my architecture is not right, I feel friction. Well, I get the same if I prompt and something takes too long. Maybe, okay, where's the mistake? Did I-- do I have a mistake in my thinking? Is there, like, a misunderstanding in the architecture? Like, uh, if, if something takes longer than it should, I, I-- you can just always, like, stop and, like, just press Escape. Where, where are the problems?

    25. LFLex Fridman1:09:00

        Maybe you did not sufficiently empathize with the perspective of the agent. In that c-- in that sense, you didn't provide enough information, and because of that, it's thinking way too long.

    26. PSPeter Steinberger1:09:08

        Yeah, it just tries to force a feature in that your current architecture makes really hard. Um, like, you need to approach this more like a conversation. For example, when I-- my favorite thing, when I review a pull request, and we're getting a lot of pull requests, I first just review this PR. It got me the review. My first question is: Do you understand the intent of the PR? I don't even care about the implementation. I... Well, like, in almost all PRs up, person has a problem, person tries to solve the problem, person sends PR. I mean, there's, like, cleanup stuff and other stuff, but, like, ninety-nine percent is, like, this way, right? They either wanna fix a, fix a bug, add a feature, usually one of those two. And then Codex will be like: "Yeah, it's quite clear person tried this and this." Is this the most optimal way to do it? No. In most cases, it's, it's like a not really, da, da, da, da, da, dum. And I'm-- and, and then I start like: "Okay, what would be a better way? Have you, have you looked into this part, this part, this part?" And then most likely, Codex didn't yet because its, its context size is empty, right? So you point them into parts where you have the system understanding that it didn't see yet. And it's like: "Oh, yeah, like we should-- we also need to consider this and this," and then, like, we have a discussion of how would the optimal way to, to solve this look like. And then you can still go further and say: "Could we, could we make that even better if we did a larger refactor?" "Yeah, yeah, we could totally do this and this, and... or this and this." And then I consider, okay, is this worth the refactor, or should we, like, keep that for later? Many times, I just do the refactor because, uh, refactors are cheap now. Even though you might break some other PRs, nothing really matters anymore. Codex-- like, those modern agents will just figure things out. It might just take a minute longer. But you have to approach it like a discussion with a, a very capable engineer who's... generally makes good-- comes up with good solutions, some- sometimes needs a little help.

    27. LFLex Fridman1:11:19

        But also don't force your worldview too hard on it. Let the agent do the thing that it's good at doing based on what it was trained on.

    28. PSPeter Steinberger1:11:30

        Yeah.

    29. LFLex Fridman1:11:30

        Don't, like, force your worldview, because it might, it might have a better idea, because it just knows a better idea better, because it was trained on that more.

    30. PSPeter Steinberger1:11:39

        That's multiple levels, actually. I think partially why I find it quite easy to work with agents is because I led engineering teams before. You know, I had a large company before, and eventually, you have to understand and accept and realize that your employees will not write the code the same way you do. Maybe it's also not as good as you would do, but it will push the project forward, and if I breathe down everyone's neck, they're just gonna hate me-
11. 1:32:09 – 1:38:52

    Programming setup

    1. LFLex Fridman1:32:09

       Okay, we're back. Uh, some of the other aspects of the dev workflow is pretty interesting, too. I think we, we went off on a tangent. L- maybe some of the mundane things like how many monitors? There's that legendary picture of you with, like, seventeen thousand monitors. [chuckles]

    2. PSPeter Steinberger1:32:26

       I mean, I, I, I mocked myself here, so just added using Grok to, to add more screens.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:32:33

       Yeah, how much is this as meme, and how much is this as reality?

    4. PSPeter Steinberger1:32:36

       Yeah, I think two MacBooks are real. The main one that drives the two big screens, and there's another MacBook that I sometimes use for, for testing.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:32:46

       So two big screens.

    6. PSPeter Steinberger1:32:48

       I'm a big fan of anti-glare. Um, so I have this wide Dell that's anti-glare, and you can just fit a lot of terminals side by side. I usually have a terminal, and at the bottom, I, I, I split them. I have a little bit of actual terminal, mostly because when I started, I, I sometimes made the mistake, and I, I m- I mixed up the, the windows, and I gave... I, I prompted in the wrong project, and then the agent ran off for, like, twenty minutes, manically trying to understand what I could have meant, being completely confused because [chuckles] it was the wrong folder. And sometimes they've been clever enough to, like, get out of the work dir and, like, figure out that, "Oh, you meant another project."

    7. LFLex Fridman1:33:36

       Mm-hmm.

    8. PSPeter Steinberger1:33:36

       But oftentimes, it's just like: "What?" You know? [chuckles] Like, fit your-- f- put yourself in the shoes of your... of the agent and, and-

    9. LFLex Fridman1:33:43

       Yeah

    10. PSPeter Steinberger1:33:44

        ... and then get, like, a super weird something that does not exist, and then just, like, they're problem solvers, so they try really hard, and all [chuckles] was for bad. So it's always, um, Codex and, like, a little bit of actual terminal. Also helpful because I don't use work trees. I like to keep things simple. That's why, that's why I like the terminal so much, right? There's no UI. It's just me and the agent having a conversation. Like, I don't even need plan mode, you know? There's so many people, they come from Claude Code, and they're so, so Claude-pilled and, like, have their workflows, and they come to Codex, and now it has plan mode, I think, but I don't think it's necessary because you just, you just talk to the agent. And when it's... When you are-- There's a few trigger words how you can prevent it from building. You're like, "Discuss. Give me options."

    11. LFLex Fridman1:34:37

        Mm-hmm.

    12. PSPeter Steinberger1:34:38

        "Don't write code yet," if you wanna be very specific. You just talk, and then when you're ready, then, then just write, "Okay, build," and it'll do the thing, and then maybe it goes off for twenty minutes and does the thing.

    13. LFLex Fridman1:34:50

        You know what I really like is, uh, asking it, "Do you have any questions for me?"

    14. PSPeter Steinberger1:34:54

        Yeah. And again, like, Claude Code has a UI that kind of guides you through that is kind of cool, but I just find it unnecessary and slow. Like, often, it would give me four questions, and then I maybe I write, "One yacht, two N, three, discuss more, four, I don't know." Or often- oftentimes I, I feel like I almost mock the model, where I ask it, "Do you have any questions for me?" And I, I, I don't even read the questions fully, like, I scan over the questions, and I, I get the impression all of this can be answered by reading more code, and it's just like, "Read more code to answer your own questions." And it usually works.

    15. LFLex Fridman1:35:32

        Yeah.

    16. PSPeter Steinberger1:35:32

        And then if not, it will come back and tell me, but many times they just realize that, you know, it's like you're in the dark, and you slowly discover the room, so that's how they slowly discover the codebase, and they, they do it from scratch every time.

    17. LFLex Fridman1:35:46

        But I'm also fascinated by the fact that I can empathize deeper with the model when I read its questions. Because I can understand-- Because you said you can infer certain things by the runtime. I can infer also a lot of things by the questions it's asking because it's very possible I didn't provide it the right context, the right files, the right guidance. So somehow ask, g- reading the question, not even necessarily answering them, but just reading the questions, you get an understanding of where the gaps of knowledge are. It's in- it's interesting, and-

    18. PSPeter Steinberger1:36:24

        You know, that in some ways, they are ghosts, so even if you plan everything and you build, you can, you can experiment with a question like: "Now that you built it, what would you have done different?"

    19. LFLex Fridman1:36:37

        [chuckles]

    20. PSPeter Steinberger1:36:37

        And then oftentimes you get, like, actually something where they discover only throughout building that, oh, what we actually did was not optimal. Many times I, I ask them: "Okay, now that you built it, what can we refactor?" Because then you build it, and you feel the pain points. I mean, you don't feel the pain points, but right there discover where, where there were problems or where things didn't work at in the first try, and it re- required more loops. So every time, almost every time I, I merge a PR, I build a feature, afterwards, I ask, "Hey, what can we refactor?" Sometimes it's like, "No, there's, like, nothing big," or, like, usually they say, "Yeah, this thing we should really look at." But that took me quite a while to, like... You know, that flow took me a lot of time to understand, and if you don't do that, you eventually, you slop yourself into, into a corner. You, like, you have to keep in mind-... they work very much like humans. Like I, I, if I write software by myself, I also build something, and then I feel the pain points, and then I, I get this urge that I need to refactor something. So I can very much sympathize with the agent, and you just need to u-use the context.

    21. LFLex Fridman1:38:00

        Mm-hmm.

    22. PSPeter Steinberger1:38:00

        Or, like, you also use the context to write tests. And so, uh, Codex, um, Opus, like the, the, the modern models, they, they usually do that by default, but I still often ask the questions: "Hey, do we have enough tests?" "Yeah, we tested this and this, but this corner case could be something." Yeah, write more tests. Um, documentation. Now that the whole context is full, like, I mean, I'm not saying my documentation is great, but it's not bad, and pretty much everything is, is LM generated. So, so you have to approach it as you build feature. As you change something, I'm like: "Okay, write documentation. What file would you pick? You know, like, what file name, where, where would that fit in?" And it gives me a few options, and I'm like, "Oh, maybe also add it there," and that's all part of the

12. 1:38:52 – 1:47:59

    GPT Codex 5.3 vs Claude Opus 4.6

    1. PSPeter Steinberger1:38:52

       session.

    2. LFLex Fridman1:38:52

       Maybe you can talk about the, the current two big competitors in terms of models, Claude Opus 4.6 and GPT-5 through Codex. Which is better? How different are they? I think you've spoken about Codex reading more and Opus being more, uh, willing to take action faster and maybe being more creative in the actions it takes.

    3. PSPeter Steinberger1:39:20

       Yeah.

    4. LFLex Fridman1:39:20

       But because Codex reads more, it's able to deliver maybe better code. Can you speak to the di- um, differences there?

    5. PSPeter Steinberger1:39:29

       Oh, I have a lot of words there. Um, is as a general purpose model, Opus is the best. Like, for OpenClaw, Opus is extremely good in terms of role play, like, really going into the character that you give it. It's very good at... Uh, it was really bad, but it really made an arch to be really good at, um, following commands. It is usually quite fast at trying something. It's much more tailored to, like, trial and error. It's very pleasant to use. In general, it's almost like Opus was, is a little bit too American, and, oh, I should-- maybe it is a bad analogy. You probably get roasted for that. [chuckles]

    6. LFLex Fridman1:40:27

       I know exactly. It's 'cause Codex is German.

    7. PSPeter Steinberger1:40:30

       Yeah. [laughing]

    8. LFLex Fridman1:40:30

       Is that what you're saying?

    9. PSPeter Steinberger1:40:31

       [laughing]

    10. LFLex Fridman1:40:32

        Actually, now that you say it, it makes perfect sense.

    11. PSPeter Steinberger1:40:34

        Or you could, you could-- sometimes I-

    12. LFLex Fridman1:40:36

        [chuckles]

    13. PSPeter Steinberger1:40:36

        ... sometimes I explain it.

    14. LFLex Fridman1:40:38

        I will never be able to unthink what you just said. That's so true. [chuckles]

    15. PSPeter Steinberger1:40:42

        But you also know that a lot of the Codex team is, like, European. Um, [chuckles] so maybe there's a bit more to it.

    16. LFLex Fridman1:40:49

        [chuckles] That's so true. Oh, that's funny.

    17. PSPeter Steinberger1:40:51

        But also Antr- Anthropic, they fixed it a little bit. Like, Opus used to say, "You're absolutely right," all the time, and it, it, it today, it still triggers me. I can't hear it anymore. It's not even a joke. I, I just... You-- this was like the, the meme, right? "You're absolutely right."

    18. LFLex Fridman1:41:09

        You're allergic to sycophancy a little bit.

    19. PSPeter Steinberger1:41:11

        Yeah, I, I can't... Some other comparison is, like, Opus is like the coworker that is a little silly sometimes, but he's really funny, and you keep him around, and Codex is like the, the weirdo in the corner that you don't want to talk to, but he's reliable and gets shit done.

    20. LFLex Fridman1:41:31

        Yeah.

    21. PSPeter Steinberger1:41:32

        Um, ultimately... [chuckles]

    22. LFLex Fridman1:41:36

        This all feels very accurate.

    23. PSPeter Steinberger1:41:39

        I mean, ultimately, if you're a skilled driver, you can get good results with any of those latest gen models. Um, I like Codex more because it doesn't require so much charade. It will just, it'll just read a lot of code by default. Opus, you really have to, like, you have to have plan mode, you have to push it harder to, like, go in these directions because it's, it's just like, like: "Yeah, can I go in? Can I go in?"

    24. LFLex Fridman1:42:08

        Yeah. [chuckles]

    25. PSPeter Steinberger1:42:08

        It'll just run off very fast, and that's a very localized solution. I think, I think the difference is, is in the post-training. It's not like the, the raw model intelligence is so different, but it's just... I think they just gave it, give it different, different goals. A- and no model, no model is better in, in, in every aspect.

    26. LFLex Fridman1:42:29

        What about the code that it generates? Uh, d- in terms of the actual quality of the code, is it basically the same?

    27. PSPeter Steinberger1:42:36

        If you drive it right, Opus even sometimes can make more elegant solutions, but it requires more skill. It's, it's harder to have so many sessions in parallel with Claude Code because it's, it's more interactive, and I, I think that's what a lot of people like, especially if they come from coding themselves. Whereas Codex is much more, you have a discussion, and then it'll just disappear for twenty minutes. Like, even Amp, they, they now added a deep mode. They finally-- I mocked them, "Yo, you finally saw the light." And then they had this whole talk about, you have to approach it differently, and I think that's where, that's where people struggle when they just try Codex after trying Claude Code, is that it's, it's a slightly different-- it's, it's less interactive. It's, it's like, I have quite long discussions sometimes, and then, like, go off, and then, yeah, doesn't matter if it takes ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty minutes or longer. You know, like, the sixth thing was, like, six hours.... the latest trend can be very, very persistent until it works. If there's a clear solution, like this is, this is what I want at the end, so it works, the model will work very hard to really get there. So I think ultimately, they both need similar time, but on, on, on Claude, it, it's, it's a little more trial and error often, and, and Codex sometimes overthinks. I prefer that. I prefer the dry, the dry version, where I have to read less, uh, over, over the more interactive, nice way. Uh, like, people like that so much though, that OpenAI even added a second mode with, like, a more pleasant personality. I haven't even tried it yet. I, I kinda like the Brad.

    28. LFLex Fridman1:44:37

        Mm-hmm.

    29. PSPeter Steinberger1:44:38

        Um, [laughing] yeah, 'cause, uh, I care about efficiency when I build it-

    30. LFLex Fridman1:44:45

        Right
13. 1:47:59 – 2:09:59

    Best AI agent for programming

    1. LFLex Fridman1:47:59

       Uh, what do you think about Claude Code in comparison to OpenClaw? So Claude Code and maybe the Codex coding agent, do you see them as kind of competitors?

    2. PSPeter Steinberger1:48:11

       I mean, first of all, competitor is fun when it's not really a competition.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:48:16

       Yeah.

    4. PSPeter Steinberger1:48:16

       Like, I'm happy if, if, if all it did is, like, inspire people to build something new, cool. Um, I still use Codex for the building. I, I know a lot of people use OpenClaw to, to build stuff, and I worked hard on it to make that work. And I do smaller stuff with it in terms of code, but, like, if I work hours and hours, I want a big screen, not WhatsApp, you know? So for me, a personal agent is much more about my life or, like, like, a coworker. Like, I give it, like, a GitHub URL, like: "Hey, try out this CLI. Does it actually work? What can we learn?" Blah, blah, blah. But when I'm deep in, deep in the flow, I want to have multiple, multiple things, and it being very, very visible what it, what it does. So I don't see it as a competition. It's, it's different things.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:49:16

       But do, do you think there's a, a, a future where the two kinda combine, like, your personal agent is also your best developing co-programmer partner?

    6. PSPeter Steinberger1:49:29

       Yeah, totally. I think this is where the fuck's going, that this is gonna be more and more your operating system.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:49:37

       The operating system.

    8. PSPeter Steinberger1:49:37

       And it already is so funny, like, I, I, I added support for sub-agents and also for-... um, TTI support, so it could actually run Cloud Code or Codex.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:49:52

       Mm-hmm.

    10. PSPeter Steinberger1:49:53

        And because mine's a little bit bossy, it, it, it started it, and it, it, it told him, like, "Who's the boss?" basically. And it's like, "Ah, Codex is obeying me." [laughing]

    11. LFLex Fridman1:50:05

        Well, there's a power struggle.

    12. PSPeter Steinberger1:50:06

        And also the current interface is probably not the final form. Like, if you think more globally, we are-- we copied Google for agents. You have, like, a prompt and, and then you have a chat interface. That, to me, very much feels like when we first created television, and then people recorded radio shows on television, and you saw that on TV.

    13. LFLex Fridman1:50:39

        Mm-hmm.

    14. PSPeter Steinberger1:50:39

        I think there is, there's n- there's better ways how we eventually will communicate with models, and we are still very early in this 'how will it even work?' phase. So-

    15. LFLex Fridman1:50:56

        Mm.

    16. PSPeter Steinberger1:50:58

        -it will eventually converge, and we will also figure out whole different ways how to work with those things.

    17. LFLex Fridman1:51:05

        Uh, one of the other components of workflow is, uh, operating system. So I told you offline that for the first time in my life, I'm expanding, uh, my sort of realm of exploration to the, uh, to the Apple ecosystem, to Mac's iPhone, and so on. Uh, for most of my life, I've been a Linux, Windows, and WSL 1, WSL 2 person, which I think are all wonderful, but I expanding to also trying Mac, because it's another way of building, and it's also a way of building that a large part of the community currently that's utilizing LLMs and agents is using, so that's the reason I'm expanding to it. But is there something to be said about the different operating systems here? We should say that OpenClaw is supported across operating systems.

    18. PSPeter Steinberger1:51:56

        Yeah.

    19. LFLex Fridman1:51:57

        I saw WSL 2 recommended, so I had Windows for certain o- operations, but then Windows, Linux, uh, macOS are obviously supported.

    20. PSPeter Steinberger1:52:07

        Yeah, it should even work natively in Windows. I just didn't have enough time to properly test it, and, you know, like, the last ninety percent of software, always easier than the first ninety percent, so I'm sure there are some dragons left that will eventually nail out. Um, my road was, for a long time, Windows, just because I grew up with that. Then I switched and had a long phase with Linux, built my own kernels and everything, and then I went to university, and I, I had my, my hacky Linux thing and saw this white MacBook, and I just thought, "This is a thing of beauty," the white plastic one. And then I converted to Mac, 'cause mostly I was, I was sick that audio wouldn't work on Skype and all the other issues that, that Linux had for a long time. And then I just stuck with it, and then I dug into iOS, which required macOS anyhow, so it was never a question. I think Apple lost a little bit of its lead in terms of native. It used to be... Native apps used to be so much better, and especially in the Mac, there's more people that build software with love. On, on Windows, it, it-- Windows has much more, and, like, function-wise, there's just more, period. But a lot of it felt more functional and less done with love. Um, I mean, Mac always, like, attracted more designers and people. I felt, even though, like, often it has less features, it, it had more delight-

    21. LFLex Fridman1:53:54

        Mm-hmm

    22. PSPeter Steinberger1:53:56

        ... um, and playfulness, so I always valued that. But in the last few years, many times I actually prefer-- Oh, God, people are gonna roast me for that, but I prefer ElectronApps because they work, and native apps often, especially if it's, like, a web service as a native app, are lacking features. I'm not saying it couldn't be done. It's more like a, a focus thing that, like, for many, many companies, native was not that big of a priority. But if they build an ElectronApp, it's the only app, so it is a priority, and there's a lot more code-sharing possible. And I, I build a lot of native Mac apps. I love it. I, I can't, I can't help myself. Like, I love crafting little Mac, Mac, uh, menu bar tools. Like, I built one to, to monitor your Codex use. I built one I call Trimmy. That's specifically for agentic use. When you, when you select text that goes over multiple lines, it would remove the new lines, so you could actually paste it to a terminal. That was, again, like, "This is annoying me," and after the twentieth time of it is annoying me, I just built it. Um, there is a cool Mac app for OpenClaw that I don't think many people discovered yet, also because it, it still needs some love. It feels a little bit too much like the HumaCar right now because I, I just experiment a lot with it. It, it lacks the polish.

    23. LFLex Fridman1:55:32

        So you still-- I mean, you still love it. You still, you still love, uh, adding to the delight of that operating system.

    24. PSPeter Steinberger1:55:37

        Yeah, but then you realize... Like, I also built one, for example, for GitHub, and then the-- if you use SwiftUI, like, the latest and greatest of Apple, and took them forever to build something to show an image from the web. Now we have Async, Async Image, but-... I added support for it, and then some images would just not show up or, like, be very slow. And I had a discussion with Codex, like: "Hey, why is there a bug?" And even Codex were like, "Yeah, there's this ASIC image, but it's really more of for experimenting, and it should not be used in production." But that's Apple's answer to, like, showing images from the web. This shouldn't be so hard.

    25. LFLex Fridman1:56:19

        Yeah.

    26. PSPeter Steinberger1:56:19

        You know, this is like, this is, like, insane. Like, how am I in, in, in two thousand and twenty-six, and my agent telling me, "Don't use the stuff Apple built because it's, it's, it's-- yeah, it, it's there, but it's not good." And, like, this is now in the weights. This, this-- to me, this is like, um, they had so much head start and so much love, and they kinda just, like, blundered it and didn't, didn't evolve it as much as they should.

    27. LFLex Fridman1:56:50

        But also, there's just the practical reality. If you look at, at Silicon Valley, most of the developer world that's kind of playing with LLMs and agentic AI, they're all using Apple products. And then, at the same time, Apple is not really, like, leaning on that. Like, they're not, they're not opening up and playing and working together and, like, "Yes!"

    28. PSPeter Steinberger1:57:12

        Isn't, isn't it funny how they completely blunder AI, and yet everybody's buying Mac Minis? [chuckles]

    29. LFLex Fridman1:57:19

        How-- wait, does that even make sense? You're, you're, you're quite possibly the world's greatest Mac salesman of all time. [chuckles]

    30. PSPeter Steinberger1:57:29

        No, you don't need a Mac Mini to install OpenClaw. You can install it on the web. There's, there's a concept called nodes, so you can, like, make your computer a node, and it will do the same. There is something said for running it on separate hardware. That right now is useful. Um, there is, there's a big argument for the browser. You know, I, I built some an agentic browser using there, and, I mean, it's basically Playwright with a bunch of extras to make it easier for agents.
14. 2:09:59 – 2:13:56

    Life story and career advice

    1. LFLex Fridman2:09:59

       So there's a, a lot of programmers and builders who draw inspiration from y- your story, just the way you carry yourself, your choice of, uh, making, um, OpenClaw open source, the, the way you have fun building and exploring, and doing that, for the most part, alone or on a small team. So by way of advice, what metric should be the goal that they would be optimizing for? What would be the metric of success? Would it be happiness? Is it money? Is it positive impact for people who are dreaming of building? 'Cause you went through an interesting journey. You've achieved a lot of those things, and then you fell out of love with programming a little bit for a time.

    2. PSPeter Steinberger2:10:47

       I was just burning too bright for too long. [chuckles] I, I ran-- I started PSPDFKit, uh, and ran it for thirteen years, and it was high stress. Um, I had to learn all the things fast and hard, like how to manage people, how to bring people on, how to deal with customers, how to do-

    3. LFLex Fridman2:11:14

       So it wasn't just programming stuff, it was people stuff.

    4. PSPeter Steinberger2:11:17

       The stuff that burned me out was mostly people stuff. I, I don't think burnout is working too much. Maybe to a degree, everybody's different. You know, ca- I cannot speak in, in absolute terms, but for me, it was much more differences, um, with my, my co-founders, conflicts, or, like, really high-stress situation with customers that eventually grinded me down. And then when... luckily, uh, we, we got a really good offer for, like, putting the company to the next level, and I, I already kind of worked two years on making myself obsolete. So at this point, I could leave, and, and then I just-- I was sitting in front of the screen, and I felt like, you know, Austin Powers, where they suck the mojo out?

    5. LFLex Fridman2:12:13

       Yeah.

    6. PSPeter Steinberger2:12:14

       Uh, it was like... It was, like, gone. Like, I couldn't, I couldn't get code out anymore. I was just, like, staring and feeling empty. [inhales] And then I, I just stopped. I, I booked, like, a one-way trip to Madrid, and, and just, like, spent it some time, some time there. I felt I, I had to catch up on life, so I did a whole, a whole bunch of life-catching-up stuff.

    7. LFLex Fridman2:12:47

       Did you go through some lows during that period? And, uh, you know, maybe advice on of how to-

    8. PSPeter Steinberger2:12:56

       Maybe advice on how to approach life: if you think that, "Oh, yeah, I work really hard, and then I retire," I don't recommend that because the idea of, "Oh, yeah, just enjoy life now," it maybe is appealing, but right now, I enjoy life the most I ever enjoyed life. Because if you wake up in the morning, and you have nothing to look forward to, you have no real challenge, that gets very boring very fast. And then when, when you're bored, you're gonna look for other places how to stimulate yourself, and then maybe, maybe that's drugs, you know? But that will eventually also get boring, and you look for more, and that will lead you down a very dark path.

15. 2:13:56 – 2:17:49

    Money and happiness

    1. LFLex Fridman2:13:57

       But you also showed on the money front, you know, a lot of people in Silicon Valley, in the start-up world, they think, maybe overthink, way too much optimized for money. And you've also shown that it's not like you're saying no to money. I mean, I'm sure you take money, but it's not-... the primary objective of, uh, uh, of your life? Can you just speak to that, your philosophy on money?

    2. PSPeter Steinberger2:14:20

       When I built my company, money was never the driving force. It felt more like, like an affirmation that I did something right, and having money solves a lot of problems. I also think that there's diminishing returns the more you have. Um, like a cheeseburger is a cheeseburger, and I think if you go too far into, "Oh, I do private jet, and I only travel luxury," you disconnect with society. Um, I, I donate it quite a lot. Like, I have a, I have a foundation for helping people that weren't so lucky.

    3. LFLex Fridman2:15:11

       And disconnecting from society is bad in that on many levels, but one of them is, like, humans are awesome. It's nice to continuously remember the awesomeness in humans.

    4. PSPeter Steinberger2:15:23

       I, I mean, I could afford really nice hotels. The last time I was in San Francisco, I did the, the first time, the OG Airbnb experience-

    5. LFLex Fridman2:15:30

       Yeah

    6. PSPeter Steinberger2:15:30

       ... and just booked a room. Mostly because I, I thought, "Okay, I'm-- either I'm out or I'm sleeping, and I don't like where all the hotels are," and I wanted a, I wanted a different experience. I think, isn't life all about experiences? Like, if you're, if you tailor your life towards, "I wanna have experiences," it, it reduces the need for it needs to be good or bad. Like, if people only want good experiences, that's not gonna work. But if you optimize for experiences, if it's good, amazing; if it's bad, amazing. 'Cause, like, I learned something, I saw something, I did something. I wanted to experience that, and it was amazing. Like, there was, like, this, this queer DJ in there, and I showed her how to make music with CloudCode. [laughing] And we, like, immediately bonded, and I had a great time.

    7. LFLex Fridman2:16:24

       Yeah, there's something about that, uh, Air-- you know, couchsurfing, Airbnb experience, the OG. I mean, still to this day, it's awesome. It's humans, and that's why travel is awesome.

    8. PSPeter Steinberger2:16:34

       Yeah.

    9. LFLex Fridman2:16:34

       Just experience the variety of the diversity of humans. And when it's shitty, it's good too, man. If it rains, and you're soaked, and it's all fucked, and planes, the-- everything is shit, everything is fucked, it's still awesome. If you're able to open your eyes to it's good to be alive.

    10. PSPeter Steinberger2:16:49

        Yeah, and anything that creates emotion and feelings is good. [chuckles] Even so, so, so maybe, maybe even the cryptic people are good because they definitely created emotions. I, I don't know if I should go that far. [laughing]

    11. LFLex Fridman2:17:02

        Nah, man, give 'em, give 'em all-- give 'em love, give 'em love. I do think that online lacks some of the awesomeness of real life.

    12. PSPeter Steinberger2:17:13

        Yeah.

    13. LFLex Fridman2:17:13

        That's, that's... It's an open problem of how to solve, how to infuse the online cyber experience with the, I don't know, uh, with the intensity that we humans feel when it's in real life. I don't know. I don't know if that's a solvable problem.

    14. PSPeter Steinberger2:17:31

        Well, it's just often because text is very lossy.

    15. LFLex Fridman2:17:35

        Yeah.

    16. PSPeter Steinberger2:17:35

        You know, sometimes I wish if I talk to the agent, I would-- it should be multimodal, so it also understands my emotions.

    17. LFLex Fridman2:17:43

        I mean, it, it might move there. It might move there.

    18. PSPeter Steinberger2:17:46

        It will. It will, it totally will.

16. 2:17:49 – 2:34:58

    Acquisition offers from OpenAI and Meta

    1. LFLex Fridman2:17:49

       I mean, I have to ask you, just curious, I, I know you've probably gotten huge offers from, uh, major companies. Can you speak to who you're considering, uh, working with?

    2. PSPeter Steinberger2:18:04

       Yeah. So to, like, explain my thinking a little bit, right? I did not expect this blowing up so much. So there's a lot of doors that opened because of it. There's like... I think every VC, every big VC company is in my inbox and try to get fifteen minutes of me. So there's, like, this butterfly effect moment. I could just do nothing and continue, and I really like my life. Valid choice, almost. Like, I considered it when I deleted-- wanted to delete the whole thing. I could create a company. Been there, done that. Um, there are so many people that push me towards that, and, yeah, like, could be amazing.

    3. LFLex Fridman2:19:07

       We should say that you, you would probably raise a lot of money in that.

    4. PSPeter Steinberger2:19:10

       Yeah.

    5. LFLex Fridman2:19:11

       I don't know, hundreds of millions, billion, I don't know. It could just got unlimited amount of money.

    6. PSPeter Steinberger2:19:15

       Yeah. It just doesn't excite me as much 'cause I feel [inhales] I did all of that, and it would take a lot of time away from the things I actually enjoy. I-- Same as when, when I was CEO, I think I, I learned to do it, and I'm not bad at it. Um, partly, I'm good at it. [inhales] But yeah, that path doesn't excite me too much, and I also fear it, it would create a natural conflict of interest. Like, what's the most obvious thing I do? I, I productize it up with, like, a version safe for workplace. And then what do you do? I get a pull request with a feature like add audit log, but that seems like an enterprise feature. So now I feel I have a conflict of interest in the open-source version and the closed-source version.... or change the license to something like FSL, where you cannot actually use it for commercial stuff, would first be very difficult with all the contributions. And second of all, I, I like the idea that it's free as in beer and not free with conditions. Um, yeah, there's ways how you, how you keep all of that for free and just, like, still try to make money, but those are very difficult. And you see there's, like, fewer and fewer companies manage that. Like, even Tailwind, they're, like, used by everyone. Everyone uses Tailwind, right? And then they had to cut off seventy-five percent of their employees because they're not making money, because nobody's even going on the website anymore, because it's all done by agents. S- And just relying on donations, yeah, good luck. Like, if a project of my caliber-- if I extrapolate what a typical open source project would get, um, it's not a lot. I st- I still lose money on the project because I, I made the point of supporting every dependency, except Slack. They're a big company. They can, they can, they can do without me. But all the projects that are done by mostly individuals, um, so, like, all the... Right now, all the sponsorship goes right up to my dependencies, and if there's more, I wanna, like, buy my contributors some merch, you know?

    7. LFLex Fridman2:21:43

       So you're losing money?

    8. PSPeter Steinberger2:21:44

       Yeah, right now, I lose money on this.

    9. LFLex Fridman2:21:46

       So it's really not sustainable.

    10. PSPeter Steinberger2:21:48

        Uh, I mean, it's like, I guess something be- between ten and twenty k a month, um, which is fine, and I'm sure over time I could get that down. Um, OpenAI is helping out a little bit with tokens now, and there's other companies that have been generous. But yeah, I'm still losing money on that. So that's, that's one path I consider, but I'm just not very excited. And then there's all the big labs that I've been talking to, and from those, um, Meta and OpenAI seem the most interesting.

    11. LFLex Fridman2:22:32

        Do you lean one way or the other?

    12. PSPeter Steinberger2:22:34

        Uh, yeah. I'm, I'm not sure how much I should share there. It's not quite finalized yet. Um, let's, let's just say, like, on either of these, my conditions are that the project stays open source, that it-- maybe it's gonna be a model like Chrome and Chromium. Um, I think this is, this is too important to just give to a company and make it theirs. It-- this is... And we didn't even talk about the whole community part, but, like, the, the thing that I experienced in San Francisco, like, at ClawCon, seeing so many people so inspired, like, and having fun and just, like, building shit and, like, having, like, robots and lobster stuff walking around. Like, the-- s- people told me, like, they didn't experience this level of, of community excitement since, like, the early days of the internet, like ten, fifteen years, and there were a lot of high-caliber people there. Like, um, I was amazed. I also, like, was very sensibly overloaded because too many people wanted to do selfies. [chuckles] But I love this. Like, this needs to stay a place where people can, like, hack and learn. But also, I'm very excited to, like, make this into a version that I can get to a lot of people because I think this is the year of personal agents, and that's the future. And the fastest way to do that is teaming up with one of the labs. And I also, on a personal level, I never worked at a large company, and I'm intrigued. You know, we talk about experiences. Will I like it? I don't know. Um, but I want that experience. Uh, I, I'm, I'm sure, like, if, if I, if I announce this, then there will be people like: "Oh, he sold out," blah, blah, blah. But the project will continue. Um, from everything I talked to so far, I can e- even have more resources for that. Like, both, both of those companies understand the value that I created something that accelerates our timeline and that got people excited about AI. I mean, can you imagine, like, I installed OpenClaw on one of my, I'm sorry, normie friends? I'm sorry, Vahan. [chuckles] But he's also, you know, like, he's-

    13. LFLex Fridman2:25:33

        Normie with love, yeah, for sure.

    14. PSPeter Steinberger2:25:34

        He, he, like someone who uses the computer but never really-- like, yeah, use some ChatGPT sometimes, but not very technical. Wouldn't really understand what I built. So, like, "I'll show you," and I, I paid for him the, the ninety buck, a hundred buck, I don't know, subscription for Entropic and set up everything for him with, like, VWSL, Windows. I was so curious, would it actually work on Windows, you know? Um, it was a little early. And then within a few days, he was hooked. Like, he texted me of all the things he learned. He built, like, even little tools. He's not a programmer. And then within a few days, he upgraded to the two hundred dollar subscription, um, or euros, because he's in Austria.... and he was in love with that thing. That for me was like a very early product validation. It's like, I built something that captures people. And then a few days later, Entropic blocked him, because based on their rules, um, using the subscription is problematic or whatever. And he was, like, devastated, and then he signed up for MiniMax for ten bucks a month and uses that. And I think that's silly in many ways, because you just got a two-hundred buck customer. You just made someone hate your company, and we are still so early. Like, we don't even know what the final form is. Is it gonna be cloud code? Probably not, you know. Like, that seems very-- it seems very short-sighted to lock down your product so much. All the other companies have been helpful. I'm in Slack of, of most of the big labs. Kinda everybody understands that we are still in era of exploration, in the area of the radio shows on TV and not, and not, uh, modern TV show that fully uses the format.

    15. LFLex Fridman2:27:45

        I think, I think you've made a lot of people, like, see the possibility, non-- uh, sorry, non, non-technical people see the possibility of AI and just fall in love with this idea and enjoy interacting with AI, and that's a beau-- that's a really beautiful thing. I think I also speak, uh, for a lot of people in saying, I think you're one of the, the great people in AI in terms of having a good heart, good vibes, humor, the right spirit. And so it would, in a sense, this model that you're describing, having open source part and you being part of, um, uh, also building a thing inside additionally of a large company, would be great, 'cause it's great to have good people in those companies.

    16. PSPeter Steinberger2:28:36

        You know what also people don't really see is, I made this in three months. I did other things as well. You know, I have a lot of projects. Like, this is not-- yeah, in January, this was my main focus because I saw the storm coming, but before that, I built a whole bunch of other things. Um, I have so many ideas. Some should be there, some would be much better fitted when I have access to the latest toys. [laughing]

    17. LFLex Fridman2:29:01

        [laughing]

    18. PSPeter Steinberger2:29:01

        Uh, and I, I kinda wanna have access to, like, the latest toys. Um, so this is important. This is cool. This will continue to exist. My, my short-term focus is, like, working through those, uh, is it two-- is it three thousand PRs now by now? I don't even know. Like, there's, there's a little bit of backlog. [laughing] But this is not gonna be the thing that I'm gonna work until I'm, I'm, I'm eighty. You know, this is, this is a window into the future. I'm gonna make this into a cool product. Um, but yeah, I have like, I have more ideas.

    19. LFLex Fridman2:29:36

        If you had to pick, is there a company you lean? So Meta, OpenAI, is there one you lean towards going with?

    20. PSPeter Steinberger2:29:44

        I spent time with both of those, and it's funny because a few weeks ago, I, I didn't consider any of this. Um, and it's really fucking hard. [laughing] Like...

    21. LFLex Fridman2:30:05

        Yeah.

    22. PSPeter Steinberger2:30:06

        I have some-- I know more people at OpenAI. I love their tech. I think I'm the biggest Codex advertisement shill that's unpaid.

    23. LFLex Fridman2:30:17

        [laughing]

    24. PSPeter Steinberger2:30:17

        And it would feel so gratifying to, like, put a price on all the work I did for free.

    25. LFLex Fridman2:30:22

        [laughing]

    26. PSPeter Steinberger2:30:23

        And I would love if something happens, and those companies get just merged, 'cause it's like-

    27. LFLex Fridman2:30:32

        Is this the hardest decision you've ever had to do?

    28. PSPeter Steinberger2:30:39

        Nah, you know, I had some breakups in the past that feel like at a similar level.

    29. LFLex Fridman2:30:43

        Re- [chuckles] relationships, you mean?

    30. PSPeter Steinberger2:30:45

        Yeah.
17. 2:34:58 – 2:46:17

    How OpenClaw works

    1. LFLex Fridman2:34:58

       Can I ask you about-- we've talked about it quite a bit, but maybe just zooming out about how OpenClaw works. We've talked about different components. I wanna ask if there's some interesting stuff we missed. So there's the gateway, there's the chat clients, there's the harness, uh, there's the agentic loop. You said somewhere that everybody should im- implement an agent loop at some point in their lives.

    2. PSPeter Steinberger2:35:24

       Yeah, because it's like the, it's like the Hello World in AI. [chuckles] You know, it's actually quite simple.

    3. LFLex Fridman2:35:30

       Yeah.

    4. PSPeter Steinberger2:35:30

       And it, it, it's good to understand that that stuff's not magic. You can, you can easily build it yourself. So writing your own little Claude code. I, I even did this at a conference in Paris for people to, like, introduce them to AI. I think it's, it's a, that's a fun little practice. Um, and you, you covered a lot. I think one, one silly idea I had that turned out to be quite cool is, I built this thing with full system access, so it's like, you know, with great power becomes great responsibility, and I was like: "How can I up the stakes a little bit more?"

    5. LFLex Fridman2:36:12

       [chuckles] Yeah, right.

    6. PSPeter Steinberger2:36:14

       And I just made a-- I made it proactive. So I added a prompt. Initially, it was just a prompt, "Surprise me." Every, like, half an hour, surprise me, you know? And later on, I changed it to be, like, a little more specific in, in the definition of surprise. [chuckles] Um, but the fact that I made it proactive and that it knows you and that it cares about you, it's, it's at least it's programmed to that, prompted to do that, and that, that is a follow-on on your current session, makes it very interesting because it would just sometimes ask a follow-up question, or like, "How's your day?" I mean, again, it's a little creepy or weird or interesting, but Heartbeat very, in the beginning and still today, it, it doesn't-- the model doesn't choose to use it a lot.

    7. LFLex Fridman2:37:16

       By the way, we're, we're, we're talking about Heartbeat, as you mentioned, the thing that regularly, uh, acts.

    8. PSPeter Steinberger2:37:23

       You just kick off the loop.

    9. LFLex Fridman2:37:25

       Isn't that just a cron job, man?

    10. PSPeter Steinberger2:37:27

        Yeah, right. [chuckles] And it's like-

    11. LFLex Fridman2:37:29

        The cri-- the criticisms that you get are-

    12. PSPeter Steinberger2:37:31

        You can, you can deduce any idea to, like, a silly... Yeah, it's just, it's just a cron job in the end. I have, like, cron, separate cron jobs.

    13. LFLex Fridman2:37:41

        Isn't love just the evolutionary biology manifesting itself, and, uh, isn't-- aren't you guys just using each other?

    14. PSPeter Steinberger2:37:49

        And then, yeah, and the project is all just glue of a few different dependencies-

    15. LFLex Fridman2:37:52

        Yeah

    16. PSPeter Steinberger2:37:52

        ... and there's nothing original. Why do people-- Well, you know, isn't Dropbox just FTP with extra steps?

    17. LFLex Fridman2:38:00

        Yeah.

    18. PSPeter Steinberger2:38:00

        I found it surprising where I had this, uh, I had a shoulder operation a few months ago, so-

    19. LFLex Fridman2:38:06

        Mm-hmm

    20. PSPeter Steinberger2:38:08

        ... and the model rarely used Heartbeat, but then I was in the hospital, and it knew that I had the operation, and it checked up on me. It's like, "Are you okay?" And I just-- It's like, again, apparently, like, if something significant in the context, that triggered the Heartbeat when it rarely used the Heartbeat.... um, and it does that sometimes for people, and that just makes it a lot more relatable.

    21. LFLex Fridman2:38:36

        Uh, let me look this up on Perplexity, how OpenClaw works, just to see if I'm missing any of the stuff. Uh, local agent runtime, high-level architecture. There's-- Oh, we haven't talked much about skills, I suppose. Skill hub, the tools and the skill layer, but that's definitely a huge component, and there's a huge growing set of skills.

    22. PSPeter Steinberger2:38:55

        You know, you know what I love? That half a year ago, like, everyone was talking about MCPs.

    23. LFLex Fridman2:39:02

        Yeah.

    24. PSPeter Steinberger2:39:03

        And I was like, "Screw MCPs." Uh, every MCP would be better as a CLI, and now this stuff doesn't even have MCP support. I mean, it, it has with asterisks, but not in the core layer, and nobody's complaining.

    25. LFLex Fridman2:39:23

        Mm-hmm.

    26. PSPeter Steinberger2:39:24

        So my approach is, if you wanna extend the model with more features, you just build a CLI, and the model can call the CLI, probably gets it wrong, calls the help menu, and then on demand, loads into the context what it needs to use the CLI. It just needs a sentence to know that the CLI exists, if it's something that the model doesn't know by default. And even for a while, I, I didn't really care about skills, but skills are actually perfect for that because they, they boil down to a single sentence that explains the skill, and then the model loads the skill, and that explains the CLI, and then the model uses the CLI. Some skills are, like, raw, but most of the time, that works.

    27. LFLex Fridman2:40:16

        It's interesting. I'm, I'm, I'm asking, uh, Perplexity, MCP versus skills, 'cause, uh, this kind of requires a hot take that's q- quite recent. Because your general view is MCPs are dead-ish. So MCPs is a more structured thing. So if you, uh, listen to Perplexity here, MCP is what can I reach, so APIs, databases, services, files, via protocol, so a structured protocol of how you communicate with the thing. And then skills is more how should I work? Procedures, how style, helper scripts, and prompts, uh, often written in a kinda semi-structured, natural language, right? And so technically, skills could replace MCP if you have a smart enough model.

    28. PSPeter Steinberger2:41:00

        I think the main beauty is, is that models are really good at calling Unix commands, so if you just add another CLI, that's just another Unix command in the end. And MCPs, that has to be added in training. That's not a very natural thing for the model. It requires a very specific syntax, and the biggest thing, it's not composable. So imagine if I have a service that gives me better data, and it gives me the temperature, the average temperature, rain, wind, and all the other stuff, and I get, like, this huge blob back. As a model, I always have to get the huge blob back. I have to fill my context with that huge blob and then pick what I want. There's no way for the model to naturally filter unless I think about it proactively and add a filtering way into my MCP. But if I would build the same as a CLI, and it would give me this huge blob, it could just add a JQ command and filter itself, and then only, only get me what I actually need, or maybe even compose it into a script to, like, do some calculations with the temperature and only give me the exit output, and the mo-- and the, the, you have no context pollution. Uh, again, you can solve that with, like, sub-agents and more charades, but it's just, like, workarounds for something that might not be the optimal way. There's... It definitely, it was, you know, it was good that we had MCPs because it pushed a lot of companies towards building APIs, and now I can, like, look at an MCP and just make it into a CLI.

    29. LFLex Fridman2:42:37

        Mm-hmm.

    30. PSPeter Steinberger2:42:37

        Um, but this, this inherent problem that MCPs, by default, clutter up your context, plus the fact that most MCPs are not made good, in general, make it just not a very useful paradigm. There are some exceptions, like, uh, Playwright, for example, that requires state, and it's actually useful. That is an acceptable choice.
18. 2:46:17 – 2:52:20

    AI slop

    1. PSPeter Steinberger2:46:17

       I'm very much against any automation on Twitter. If you tweeted me with AI, I will block you. No first strike. A- as soon as it smells like AI, and AI still has a smell-

    2. LFLex Fridman2:46:31

       Mm-hmm

    3. PSPeter Steinberger2:46:31

       ... especially on tweets, it's very hard to tweet in a way that does look completely human.

    4. LFLex Fridman2:46:38

       Mm-hmm.

    5. PSPeter Steinberger2:46:38

       And then I block. Like, I have a zero-tolerance policy on that, and I think it would be very helpful if they-- if like tweets done via API would be marked.

    6. LFLex Fridman2:46:53

       Mm-hmm.

    7. PSPeter Steinberger2:46:53

       Maybe there are some special cases where... But-- And there should be, there should be a very easy way for agents to get their own Twitter account. Um-

    8. LFLex Fridman2:47:04

       Mm-hmm.

    9. PSPeter Steinberger2:47:07

       We, we need to rethink social platforms a little bit. If, if, if we, we, we go towards a future where everyone has their agent, and agents maybe have their own Instagram profiles or Twitter accounts, or can, like, do stuff on my behalf, I think it should very clearly be marked that they are doing stuff on my behalf, and it's not me. Because content is now so cheap, eyeballs are the expensive part, and I find it very triggering when I read something, and then I'm like, "Oh, no, this smells like AI."

    10. LFLex Fridman2:47:41

        Yeah. [exhales] Like, where, where is this headed in terms of what we value about the human experience? It feels like we will move more and more towards in-person interaction, and we'll just communicate. We'll talk to our AI agent to, to accomplish different tasks, to learn about different things, but we won't value online interaction because there'll be so much AI slop that smells and so many bots that it's difficult.

    11. PSPeter Steinberger2:48:15

        Well, if it's marked, then it should also be difficult to filter, and then I can look at it if I want to. But yeah, this is, like, a big thing we need to solve right now. E- especially on this project, I get so many emails that are, let's say, nicely, agentically written.

    12. LFLex Fridman2:48:36

        Yeah.

    13. PSPeter Steinberger2:48:36

        But I much rather read your broken English than your AI slop. You know, uh, of course, there's a human behind it, and yeah, they, they prompt it. I much rather read your prompt than what came out. Um, I think we're reaching a point where I value typos again. [chuckles] Like, um-

    14. LFLex Fridman2:48:59

        Yeah.

    15. PSPeter Steinberger2:49:00

        Uh, like... And I, I, I mean, it also took me a while to, like, come to the realization. I- on my blog, I experimented with creating a blog post with agents, and ultimately, it took me about the same time to, like, steer agent towards something I like, but it missed the nuances to d- how I would write it. You know, you can, like, you can steer it towards your style, but it's not gonna be all your style. So I, I completely moved away from that. I, I- everything, everything I blog is organic, handwritten, and maybe, maybe I, I, I use AI as a fix my worst typos, but there is value in the rough parts of an actual human.

    16. LFLex Fridman2:49:54

        Isn't that awesome? Isn't that beautiful, that now, because of AI, we value the raw humanity in each of us more? [chuckles]

    17. PSPeter Steinberger2:50:02

        I also, I also realized the thing that I, I rave about AI and use it so much for anything that's code, but I'm allergic if it's stories.

    18. LFLex Fridman2:50:12

        Right? Yeah.

    19. PSPeter Steinberger2:50:14

        Also, documentation, still fine with AI, you know, better than nothing.

    20. LFLex Fridman2:50:17

        And for now, it's still, uh, it, it applies in the m- in the visual medium, too. It's fascinating how allergic I am to even a little bit of AI slop in, uh, in video and images. It's useful. It's nice if it's, like, a little component of, like-

    21. PSPeter Steinberger2:50:32

        Or even, even those images, d- like, all these infographics and stuff, the-... they trigger me so hard.

    22. LFLex Fridman2:50:38

        Yeah.

    23. PSPeter Steinberger2:50:39

        Like, it immediately makes me think less of your content, and it-- they were novel for, like, one week, and now it just screams slop.

    24. LFLex Fridman2:50:50

        Yeah.

    25. PSPeter Steinberger2:50:51

        Even, even if people work hard on it, using-- and, uh, I have some on my blog post, you know, in the, in the time where I, I explored this new medium, but now they trigger me as well. It's like, yeah, this is-- this just screams AI slop. I-

    26. LFLex Fridman2:51:06

        What-- I don't know what that is, but I went through that, too. I was really excited by the diagrams, and then I realized in order to remove from them hallucinations, you actually have to do a huge amount of work. And you're just using it to draw the better diagrams, great! And then I'm proud of the diagram. I've used them for literally, like, q- kinda like you said, for maybe a couple of weeks. And now I look at those, and I, I feel like I feel when I look at Comic Sans as a font or, or something like this. It's like, no, this is-

    27. PSPeter Steinberger2:51:35

        It's a smell.

    28. LFLex Fridman2:51:35

        This is fake. It's fraudulent. There's something wrong with it, and it-

    29. PSPeter Steinberger2:51:41

        It's a smell.

    30. LFLex Fridman2:51:42

        [chuckles] It's a smell.
19. 2:52:20 – 3:00:57

    AI agents will replace 80% of apps

    1. LFLex Fridman2:52:21

       You mentioned that a lot of the apps might be basically made obsolete. You think agents will just transform the entire app market?

    2. PSPeter Steinberger2:52:30

       Yeah. Uh, I noticed that on Discord, people just said how they're-- like, what they build and what they use it for. And like, why do you need MyFitnessPal when the agent already knows where I am? So it can assume that I make bad decisions when I'm at, I don't know, Waffle House, what's around here? [chuckles] Or, or briskets in Austin.

    3. LFLex Fridman2:52:57

       There's no bad decisions around briskets, but yeah.

    4. PSPeter Steinberger2:53:00

       No, that's the best decision, honestly.

    5. LFLex Fridman2:53:02

       [chuckles]

    6. PSPeter Steinberger2:53:02

       Um-

    7. LFLex Fridman2:53:03

       Your agent should know that.

    8. PSPeter Steinberger2:53:04

       But it can like, it can modify my, my gym workout based on how well I slept or if I'm-- if I have stress or not. Like, it has so much more context to make even better decisions than any of this app even could do.

    9. LFLex Fridman2:53:18

       Mm-hmm.

    10. PSPeter Steinberger2:53:19

        It could show me UI just as I like. Why do I still need an app to do that? Why do I have to-- Why should I pay another subscription for something that the agent can just do now? S- And why do I need my, my Eight Sleep app to control my bed when I can tell the a-- tell the agent to... No, the agent already knows where I am, so it can, like, turn off what I don't use.

    11. LFLex Fridman2:53:45

        Mm-hmm.

    12. PSPeter Steinberger2:53:47

        And I think that will, that will translate into a whole category of apps that are no longer... I will just naturally stop using because my agent can just do it better.

    13. LFLex Fridman2:54:00

        I think you said somewhere that it might kill off 80% of apps.

    14. PSPeter Steinberger2:54:04

        Yeah.

    15. LFLex Fridman2:54:05

        Don't you think that's a gigantic transformative effect on just all software development? That, that means it might kill off a lot of software companies.

    16. PSPeter Steinberger2:54:13

        Yeah. Um-

    17. LFLex Fridman2:54:15

        [inhales] It's a scary thing. So, like, do you think about [exhales] the impact that has on the economy, on, um, just the ripple effects it has to society, transforming who builds what tooling? It empowers a lot of users to get stuff done, to get stuff more efficiently, to get it done, uh, cheaper.

    18. PSPeter Steinberger2:54:41

        There's also new services that we will need, right? For example, I want my agent to have an allowance. Like, "You solve problems for me. Here's, like, a hundred bucks in order to solve problems for me." And if I tell it to order me food, maybe it uses a service, maybe it uses something like rent a human to, like, just get that done for me.

    19. LFLex Fridman2:55:06

        Mm-hmm.

    20. PSPeter Steinberger2:55:06

        I don't actually care. I care about solve my problem. Uh, there's space for, for new companies that solve that well. Maybe not, not all apps disappear. Maybe some transform into being API.

    21. LFLex Fridman2:55:21

        So basically, apps that rapidly transform in being agent-facing. So there's a real opportunity for, like, Uber Eats that we just used earlier today. It, it's companies like this, of which there's many, w- who gets there fastest to being able to interact with OpenClaw in a way that's the m- the most natural, the easiest.

    22. PSPeter Steinberger2:55:50

        Yeah. And also, apps will become API if they want or not, because my agent can figure out how to use my phone. I mean, on, on the upper side, it's a little more tricky. On Android, that's already-- people already do that, and then they'll just click the Order Uber for Me button for me, um, or maybe another service, or maybe there's, there's a, there's an API it can call, so it's faster. Uh, I think there's a space we are just beginning to even understand what that means. And I-- Again, I didn't even... That was not something I thought of, something that I, that I discovered as people use this, and we are still so early. But yeah, I think data is very important, like apps that can give me data, but that also can be API. Why do I need a Sonos app anymore when I can-- when my agent can talk to the Sonos?... f- uh, speakers directly. Like my cameras, there's, like, a crappy app, but they have, they have an API, so my agent uses the API now.

    23. LFLex Fridman2:56:57

        So it's gonna force a lot of companies to have to shift focus, and it's kind of what the internet did, right? You have to rapidly rethink, reconfigure what you're selling, how you're making money.

    24. PSPeter Steinberger2:57:10

        Yeah, and some companies will really not like that. For example, there's no CLI for Google, so I had to like-- to have to do everything myself [exhales] and build GOG. That's like a CLI for Google. And at the... yeah, at the end user, they have to give me the emails, because otherwise I cannot use their product. If I'm a company and I try to get Google data, Gmail, there's a whole complicated process to the point where sometimes startups acquire startups that went through that process, so they don't, don't have to work with Google for half a year to be certified to being able to access Gmail. But my agent can access Gmail because I can just connect to it. It's still crappy because I need to, like, go through Google's developer jungle to get a key, and it's still annoying, but they cannot prevent me. And worst case, my agent just clicks on the, on the website and gets the data out that way.

    25. LFLex Fridman2:58:17

        The browsers.

    26. PSPeter Steinberger2:58:18

        Yeah. I mean, I, I watched my agent happily click the "I'm not a robot" button. [chuckles] Uh, there is this, this whole... That's gonna be, that's gonna be more heated. You see companies like, uh, Cloudflare that try to prevent bot access, and in some ways that's useful for scraping, but in other ways, if I'm, I'm a personal user, I want that. You know, sometimes I, I use Codex, and I, I read an article about modern React patterns, and it's like a Medium article. I paste it in, and the agent can't read it because they block it, so I have to copy/paste the actual text, or in the future, I learn that maybe I don't click on Medium because it's annoying, and I use other websites that actually are agent-friendly. So-

    27. LFLex Fridman2:59:13

        There's gonna be a lot of powerful, rich companies fighting back. So it's really inter-- You're at the center. You're the catalyst, the leader, and happen to be at the center of this kind of revolution where it's g- gonna completely change of how we interact with, uh, services, with, with the web. And so, like, there's companies like Google that are gonna push back. I mean, there's-- every major companies you can think of is gonna push back.

    28. PSPeter Steinberger2:59:39

        Even, yeah, even search. Um, I now use, I think, Perplexity or Brave as providers because Google really doesn't make it easy to use Google without Google. I'm not sure if that's the right strategy, but I'm not Google. [chuckles]

    29. LFLex Fridman2:59:58

        Yeah, there's a, there's a nice balance from a big company perspective, 'cause if you push back too much for too long, you become Blockbuster, and you lose everything to the Netflixes of the world. But some pushback is probably good during a revolution to see.

    30. PSPeter Steinberger3:00:11

        But you see that, like, this is something that the people want.
20. 3:00:57 – 3:12:57

    Will AI replace programmers?

    1. LFLex Fridman3:00:57

       Uh, we talked about programming quite a bit, and a lot of folks that are developers are really worried about their jobs, about their-- about the future of programming. Do you think AI replaces programmers completely, human programmers?

    2. PSPeter Steinberger3:01:11

       I mean, we're definitely going in that direction. Programming is just a part of building products, so maybe, maybe AI does replace programmers eventually, but there's so much more to that art. Like, what do you actually wanna build? How should it feel? How's the architecture? I don't think agents will replace all of that. Yeah, like, just the, the actual art of programming, it will, it will stay there, but it's, it's gonna be like knitting. You know, like, people do that because they like it, not because it makes any sense. So, so I read this article this morning about someone that it's okay to mourn our craft, and I can-- a part of me very strongly resonates with that because in my past, I, I spent a lot of time tinkering, just being really deep in the flow and just, like, cranking out code and, like, finding really beautiful solutions. And yes, in a way it's, it's sad because that will go away, and I also got a lot of joy out of just writing code and being really deep in my thoughts and forgetting time and space and just being in this beautiful state of flow. But you can get the same state of flow-- I get a similar state of flow by working with agents and building and thinking really hard about problems. It is different-... but, and it's okay to mourn it, but it's not something we can fight. Like, there is-- the world for a long time had a, there was a lack of intelligence, if you s-- if you see it like that, of people building things, and that's why salaries of software developers reached stupidly high amounts, and they will go away. Um, there will still be a lot of demand for people that understand how to build things. Just that all this tokenized intelligence, uh, enables people to do a lot more, a lot faster, and it will be even more-- even faster and even more because those things are continuously improving. Um, we had similar things when-- I mean, it's probably not a perfect analogy, but when we created the steam engine, and they built all these factories and replaced a lot of manual labor, and then people revolted and broke the machines. Um, I, I can relate that if you very deeply identify that you are a programmer, that it's scary and that it's threatening because what you like and what you're really good at is now being done by a soulless or not entity. But I don't think you're just a programmer. That's a very limiting view of your craft. You are, you are still a builder.

    3. LFLex Fridman3:04:40

       Yeah, there's a couple things I wanna say. So one is, I never-- as you're articulating this beautifully, and I'm realizing I never thought I would-- the thing I love doing would be the thing that gets replaced. You hear these stories about these, like you said, with a steam engine. I've, I've spent so many, I don't know, maybe thousands of hours poring over code and putting my heart and soul and like-- and just, like, some of my most painful and happiest moments were alone behind... I, I was an Emacs person for a long time. Man, Emacs, and, and then there's an identity, and there's meaning, and there's-- like, when I walk about the world, I don't say it out loud, but I think of myself as a programmer. And to have that in a matter of months, I mean, like you mentioned, April to November, it really is a leap that happened, a shift that's happening. [inhaling] To have that completely replaced is, uh, is painful. It's, it's truly painful. But I also think, um, programmers, builders more broadly, but what is, what is the act of programming? I, I think programmers are generally best equipped at this moment in history to learn the language, to empathize with agents, to learn the language of agents, to feel the CLI. [chuckles] Yeah, like, like to understand what is the thing you need, you, the agent, need to do this task the best?

    4. PSPeter Steinberger3:06:21

       I think at some point it's just gonna be called coding again, and it's just gonna be the new normal.

    5. LFLex Fridman3:06:25

       Yeah.

    6. PSPeter Steinberger3:06:25

       And yet, while I don't write the code, I very much feel like I'm in the driver's seat, and I am, I am writing the code. You know, it's just-

    7. LFLex Fridman3:06:37

       You'll still be a programmer. It's just the activity of a programmer is, is different.

    8. PSPeter Steinberger3:06:41

       Yeah, and 'cause on X, the bubble, I mean, is mostly positive. On, on Mastodon and Blue Sky, I don't-- I also use it less because oftentimes I got attacked for my blog posts, and I, I had stronger reactions in the past. Now I can sympathize with those people more 'cause in a way, I get it. It-- in a way, I also don't get it because it's very unfair to grab onto the person that you see right now and unload all your fear and hate. It's gonna be a change, and it's gonna be challenging, but it's also... I don't know, I find it incredibly fun and, and, and gratifying, and I can, I can use the new time to focus on much more details. I think the level of expectation of what we build is also rising because it's just now... The default is now so much easier, so software is changing in many ways. There's gonna be a lot more, and then you have all these people that are screaming: "Oh, yeah, but what about the water?" You know? Like, I did a conference in Italy about the, the state of AI, and m- my whole motivation was to push people away from, "Don't see yourself as an iOS developer anymore. You are now a builder, and you can use your skills in many more ways." Also, because apps are slowly going away, uh, people didn't like that. Like, uh, a lot of people didn't like what I had to say. And I don't think I was hyperbole. I was just like: "This is how I see the future. Maybe this is not how it's going to be, but I'm pretty sure a version of that will happen." And the first question I got was: "Yeah, but what about the insane water use on data centers?" But then you actually sit down and do the math, and then for most people, if you just skip one burger per month, that compensates the, the CO2 output or, like, the water use in equivalent of tokens. I mean, the math is, the math is tricky, and it depends if you add pre-training, then maybe it's more than just one patty.... but it's not off by a factor of a hundred, you know? So, so the-- or, like, golf is still using way more water than all data centers together. So are you also hating people that play golf? Those people grab on anything that they think is bad about AI without seeing the potential things that might be good about AI.

Episode duration: 3:15:51