Tokyo (AFP) - Peter Steinberger’s artificial intelligence agent tool OpenClaw has taken the tech world by storm with its ability to execute real-life tasks such as checking him in for his flight to Tokyo.

AI is not yet a ubiquitous personal assistant for ordinary people, but “you’ll see much more of that this year because this is the year of agents”, Steinberger told AFP in the Japanese capital on Monday.

“There are still some things we need to do to make it better,” the Austrian programmer said.

Demand is ramping up, however, with more developers now “making the future happen”, he added in an interview during a gathering for OpenClaw enthusiasts.

When downloaded, OpenClaw can be connected to existing AI models and given simple instructions through instant messaging apps, as if to a friend or colleague.

Jensen Huang, head of the world’s most valuable company Nvidia, this month hailed the tool – whose symbol is a bright red lobster – as “the next ChatGPT”.

But all the buzz has raised concerns over the cybersecurity risks of allowing AI systems vulnerable to hacks to access personal data such as bank details.

- Chinese ‘momentum’ -

Steinberger built OpenClaw in November while playing around with AI coding tools in an attempt to organise his digital life.

He has since been hired by ChatGPT creator OpenAI “to drive the next generation of personal agents”, the US startup’s boss Sam Altman said in February.

“What you have to know about OpenClaw is, like, it couldn’t have come from those big companies,” Steinberger told AFP.

“Those companies would have worried too much about what could go wrong instead of just, like – I wanted to just show people I’ve been into the future,” he said.

While tech giants work out how agent tools could be used by businesses, the next AI innovation could come from “someone who just wants to have fun”, Steinberger said.

At Monday’s “ClawCon” event in Tokyo, where many of the hundreds of participants were dressed as lobsters, OpenClaw demos were held on stage and experts helped attendees install their agents.

Similar scenes have been seen across China, where users have been particularly quick to embrace OpenClaw’s potential to organise emails, help with coding and a plethora of other digital tasks.

“If you see it as a competition, it certainly looks like China is gaining a lot of momentum” in the AI sector, Steinberger said.

“But right now there’s still quite a bit of a leap between the best models from China and the best models in the US.”

- AI ‘hammer’ -

OpenClaw’s success in China has led national cybersecurity authorities and Beijing’s IT ministry to issue official warnings over potential risks.

Is Steinberger concerned that people could use his tool for illicit purposes?

“Yes, I do worry a bit, especially because there’s now a whole cottage industry of companies that try to make a big buck and make it even simpler to install OpenClaw,” he said.

“I purposefully didn’t make it simpler so people would stop and read and understand: what is AI, that AI can make mistakes, what is prompt injection – some basics that you really should understand when you use that technology.”

But at the end of the day, “if you build a hammer… you can hurt yourself. So should we not build hammers any more”?

A Reddit-like pseudo social network for OpenClaw agents called Moltbook, where chatbots converse, has also grabbed headlines and provoked soul-searching over AI.

“A lot of that was, in my view, very much driven by humans to just create those stories,” Steinberger said, adding that joining OpenAI means he now has more resources to use on “cool ideas”.

He said 2023-2024 “was the year of ChatGPT, last year was the year of the coding agent, this year’s going to be the year of the general agent”.

“I love that I helped a lot of people to bring AI from this scary thing into something that is fun and weird and gets them excited, because we need to to make it good for this next century,” Steinberger explained.

“We need more people to think more about AI.”