Leah Figer: Yeah, definitely.
brian barrett:It’s fun. OpenClaw is a small agent that runs autonomously and has access to everything. Gemini Spark is Google’s answer to OpenClaw. It’s the same kind of autonomous assistant that can do everything, but because it’s Google, it has access to everything you do on Google and the apps that work with it. So you can see how powerful this can be. OpenClaw already had privacy question marks, and this one is even more so. You give it access to your Gmail, you give it access to your calendar, you give it access to everything you touch online, you give it access to your entire search history, and you just say, “Hey, do this. Remind me of this, do that.”
Leah Figer: I’m really interested in a certain product.
Zoe Schiffer:I know.
brian barrett:But here’s the problem. I agree too, it’s not for me, but this is the kind of thing that will eventually be presented to billions of people. Scale is not necessarily knowing, understanding, or appreciating, and I’m not trying to tell anyone off, but this is how this stuff accesses your stuff, and it can potentially go the wrong way.
Zoe Schiffer: I think OpenClaw was kind of a one-man project. The founders are now part of OpenAI, but this was a pirated experiment. I think Google takes more safety precautions when they do it.
brian barrett: No, that’s right.
Zoe Schiffer:I’m not saying there’s nothing. I’m sure this will change.
Leah Figer: Fingers crossed up and down.
Zoe Schiffer: But if they roll it out to millions, billions of people, I would expect to see additional checks and balances.
brian barrett: probably.
Zoe Schiffer: I’m looking forward to this.
Leah Figer: Well, when it comes to the major AI players, I think we all know that the reputation of AI in the public eye has taken a bit of a nosedive, but I personally love it. I love that recoil. I literally—
Zoe Schiffer: Leah is personally behind it.
Leah Figer: Yes, that’s right.
Zoe Schiffer: Black finance? Leah Figer.
Leah Figer: Every little story and comment warms AI Grinch’s heart. And we keep seeing reports that people are really frustrated that data centers are being built near their homes to power all of this AI, and their electricity bills are going up in the meantime. And then there’s the impact of AI in the increasingly demanding workplace. We were talking about meta layoffs and things like that. So it probably shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to anyone here that when former Google CEO Eric Schmidt took to the stage to speak to graduates at the University of Arizona last week, he brought up AI and things didn’t go particularly well.
Eric Schmidt, Archive Audio: It affects every profession, every classroom, every hospital, every laboratory, every person, and every relationship. I understand how many people feel about that. I can hear it. [Boos from the crowd] For your generation, the future has already been written and there is a fear that the machines will come. I understand that fear too.
