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Hi Friend,

​I built the AI assistant I’ve always wanted. Then I shut it down.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been experimenting with OpenClaw, an open source project that started as ClaudBot, then became MultBot, and now goes by OpenClaw (lawyers!). It’s essentially AI plumbing for your computer.

You install it, and suddenly you have an independent artificial intelligence agent that can work without your supervision. It can run on its own schedule, doing tasks while you sleep, responding to events as they happen, and making decisions based on rules you set up.

Think of it as the computer assistant we’ve been promised for decades, finally delivered.

I set up a Mac mini, gave it access to my course platform, email, and invoicing system, and watched it work. It was incredible. I’d wake up to text messages like “Hey Sparky, you got three customer emails overnight. I handled them and drafted replies for you. Email replies are in your drafts folder.”

The robot answered support emails while I slept. It sent invoices to sponsors. It transcribed podcast recordings. Any busy work I could do on a computer, it could do for me.

This is what I’ve been teaching automation for decades to accomplish. The computer doing the donkey work so we can focus on making great things.

But I pulled the plug.

The security problems are massive. This open source project wasn’t built with security in mind. Every expert says don’t touch it. I thought I was being smart by running it on an isolated Mac mini with custom safeguards. I created secret passphrases, limited access, tried to lock it down.

Then I woke up at 2 AM wondering if my secret passphrase was sitting in plain text in the robot’s logs. It was. The robot happily offered to show me the log file containing all my security measures.

That’s when it hit me. I’m not a security expert. If I can find these holes, imagine what someone who actually knows what they’re doing could exploit. The fundamental problem is that AI agents need access to work. You have to open doors. But 30 years of computer security has been about keeping those doors locked.

I wiped the Mac mini. Closed the accounts. Disconnected everything.

Here’s what I learned:

We’re much closer to useful AI assistance than I thought. When these things are secure, they’ll change how we work.

There’s a first-mover advantage for people who explore this safely. And we’ll always need humans in the loop. These robots are impressive but gullible.

OpenClaw isn’t ready yet. Don’t install it. Especially don’t install it on your personal computer. But watch this space.

Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google are paying attention. We’ll get something like this in a secure package eventually.

For now, the dream of having a 24/7 assistant handling digital donkey work will have to wait. But not for long.

Your pal,

David

P.S. Do you want to help me out? Why not recommend this newsletter to a friend?​

​Read this post on macsparky.com​

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