Mastodawn

Jukka Niiranen

@tante Here's the corporate vice president of Microsoft Word running #OpenClaw to organize his family tasks and comms: https://www.omarknows.ai/p/meet-lobster-my-personal-ai-assistant

Don't worry, I'm sure no malicious actors will ever target his setup to compromise #Microsoft network. I mean, they'll only have access to all info and location of his loved ones. Surely there's zero monetary value in that...

Meet Lobster 🦞: My Personal AI Assistant

And How You Can Build Your Own

OmarKnows AI

@tante OMFG. He has now connected #OpenClaw to his smart home AND published a full playbook of his setup:
https://lobster.shahine.com/

A senior leader at Microsoft basically gave the keys to his front door to autonomous GenAI agents.

Lobster

Omar Shahine's personal and family AI agent, running on OpenClaw

Lobster | OpenClaw Playbook

tante Feb 25

@jukkan professionals

sauc3 Feb 25

@jukkan @tante

I am so glad that the executives at Microslop take security so seriously. Lol. Lmao.

Patrick H. Lauke Feb 25

@jukkan @tante fucking hell, some people REALLY crave having a personal assistant a la JARVIS. i particularly find the bit at the end creepy, where the AI compliments him on how "well written" his post is. validation/praise sycophant machine...

@patrick_h_lauke @jukkan @tante I mean - I’d want one too. I would also like to have a wand from any magic world you can imagine so magic could do my dishes. Getting either of those before the end of this decade is … unrealistic.

Patrick H. Lauke Feb 25

@hiiaminfi @jukkan @tante "aren't you worried about privacy? no, since i pay for the service" oh sweet sweet summer child

jaKa Močnik Feb 25

@patrick_h_lauke @hiiaminfi @jukkan @tante omfg

https://www.omarknows.ai/p/lobster-gets-a-playbook-and-a-superpower

@jkmcnk @patrick_h_lauke @hiiaminfi @tante "Physical security matters. The Mac is in my office, which is in my house. If someone steals it, I have bigger problems."

2 weeks later: "Behold! I have connected #OpenClaw with the smart home system that can open the door to my house!!!"

Lobster Gets a Playbook (and a Superpower) 🦞🏠

I really really cannot express how useful Lobster is to me

OmarKnows AI

@jukkan @jkmcnk @patrick_h_lauke @tante this also boggles my mind. I own Smart home stuff. I get the Appeal. I really do. But Smart Locks creep me out.

Sarianna Silvonen Feb 25

@jukkan @jkmcnk @patrick_h_lauke @hiiaminfi @tante
Not exactly security-related, but I can't help wondering... why don't these family members just *talk* to each other about their movie plans or travel memories? Why doesn't this guy just pop upstairs and peek into his kid's room to see if he's asleep, like a normal person? (Tangentially, why does a Microsoft VP use an exclusively Apple-based setup for his personal computing?) This seems to me like an overly technologically fetishized way to conduct one's private life. But then I'm not a tech VP, what would I know 🤷‍♀️

tante Feb 25

@ssilvonen @jukkan @jkmcnk @patrick_h_lauke @hiiaminfi Because dudes in tech rather talk to a chatbot than their family or a therapist.

Sarianna Silvonen Feb 25

@tante @jukkan @jkmcnk @patrick_h_lauke @hiiaminfi
Yes, this case certainly makes that painfully obvious.

Patrick H. Lauke Feb 25

@ssilvonen @tante @jukkan @jkmcnk @hiiaminfi in fairness, as a father of a stroppy teenager myself, i admit that i do often end up just communicating with him upstairs via whatsapp. however...it's still me doing it. what this agentic thing does is to make "speak with the actual person to check/coordinate things" into a step for the machine to do, as part of a larger process. i can understand why, but it doesn't make it any less dehumanising and odd...

Sarianna Silvonen Feb 25

@patrick_h_lauke @tante @jukkan @jkmcnk @hiiaminfi Well yeah, any way you can get your teenager to communicate counts as a plus! What strikes me as mechanized here is using "Lobster" to relay messages between family members when they could just as easily chat directly with each other. The use of an agentic AI assistant to organize your calendar and travel plans etc. seems to me a more natural and helpful use case (security issues aside), where the "communication" is just between one person and the AI.

Cassandrich Feb 25

@patrick_h_lauke @ssilvonen @tante @jukkan @jkmcnk @hiiaminfi There's nothing wrong with communicating with someone over their preferred channel. It being WhatsApp (ick Facebook but whatever, that's not the point here) doesn't make it any less communicating than using a normal phone call or text or shouting across the house.

What is gross is putting an extractive capitalist business in the middle as the mediator of that communication so you never actually get to communicate with each other.

@tante @ssilvonen @jukkan @jkmcnk @patrick_h_lauke @hiiaminfi

PhDog 2d ago

Practically the point of technology for them, as far as I can tell.

@jukkan @jkmcnk @patrick_h_lauke @hiiaminfi @tante

Joe Brockmeier Feb 25

@ssilvonen I have no shade to throw at families using a family calendar; when my kids were in high school and my wife and I still traveled for work occasionally, etc. it was the only way to have a source of truth that people could rely on. It was especially helpful to tell the teenagers "if it's not on the calendar, I don't know about it" to avoid those "oh, but you were supposed to drive me to $thing, didn't I tell you? Oh, well, I really need a ride now." And so on.

I don't advocate for putting an LLM in the middle of all that, of course, but there is much to be said for putting family plans on a shared calendar and making it an expectation that every member checks said calendar. It doesn't replace conversation and such, but it sure can cut down on a lot of problems.

Sarianna Silvonen Feb 26

@jzb Oh yes, family calendars can be very useful, and printed ones have been around long before computers (we actually have one hanging in our kitchen right now). It's just the use of AI to mediate between family members using the same calendar that feels unnecessary and contrived to me. But of course this is a new development and this guy is clearly very excited about his current setup - it would be interesting to know if he can actually make it stick and how things are going a year from now.

@patrick_h_lauke @jukkan @tante come on at least he has multiple agents to isolate environments or something. That’s almost professional.

(I am kidding of course)

I think the most diplomatic take I can get behind is: „If you are reading a tutorial about how to set OpenClaw up: This is out of your league, keep your hands off.“

@hiiaminfi @patrick_h_lauke @tante

d@nny disc@ mc² Feb 25

@patrick_h_lauke @hiiaminfi @jukkan @tante if i contributed to a w3c group and acted this flippant about widespread corporate exploitation i somehow don't think i personally would choose to do so by describing users who expect a very basic social contract as fundamentally misguided and naive. unless you're about to describe how you protect users from that and consider it to be a basic fundamental right. i believe that's what most people who are invited to contribute to committees that maintain a surface level appearance of democratic input usually do

d@nny disc@ mc² Feb 25

@patrick_h_lauke @hiiaminfi @jukkan @tante i just can't see myself ever being motivated to find any mirth in someone thinking they're safe and being deceived. sorry

Cassandrich Feb 25

@hiiaminfi @patrick_h_lauke @jukkan @tante It's gross to want one.

@dalias @patrick_h_lauke @jukkan @tante what makes it gross?

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@dalias/116120279416031775

Cassandrich Feb 25

@hiiaminfi @patrick_h_lauke @jukkan @tante See this thread and many others like it.

María Arias de Reyna Feb 25

@patrick_h_lauke @jukkan @tante You mean: Daddy/Mommy issues are the driver of this AI bubble?

If they had had someone in their childhood telling them they did a good job we could have saved the world from climate change and wild capitalism?

Clueless by Sam Feb 25

@jukkan @tante

> From this point forward, this is only going to get better and more amazing

There's *no possible way* these words will ever come back to haunt him

Fritz Adalis Feb 25

@jukkan @tante @david_chisnall
To be fair, how much more damage could a malicious actor do to Microsoft compared to their current management?

@FritzAdalis @tante @david_chisnall

Arazil Feb 25

@jukkan @tante Let me get this straight... He has full access to the AI while his wife and kids are relegated to "read dad's schedule and get reminded when he needs something" access? Sounds like a wonderfully narcissistic "dad." The kind that would run a modern day generative AI company. 🙄