Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: If you were in Shenzhen in early March, you might
Speaker 2: have caught an unusual sight outside the headquarters of one
Speaker 2: of China's biggest tech.
Speaker 3: Companies, Chanjo more say the open Claw.
Speaker 2: Crowds of people huddled around mixshift tables in an open courtyard.
Speaker 2: Everyone had a laptop in hand. People were shoulder to
Speaker 2: shoulder typing, tinkering, troubleshooting. It looked like an outdoor hackathon
Speaker 2: had broken out in the middle of the city.
Speaker 4: There were hundreds of people from retire's elderlies to school
Speaker 4: kids and of course Yawn office workers.
Speaker 2: LUs Ding covers China Tech for Bloomberg out of Hong Kong.
Speaker 4: And they were all there to get tension engineers to
Speaker 4: install open Claw on their computer.
Speaker 3: Loose what is open claw.
Speaker 4: It's a very capable AI agentic tool. It's much more
Speaker 4: capable than AI chatbots. It can't help you to do
Speaker 4: your work on your computer like swarming files, edit videos,
Speaker 4: making purchases.
Speaker 2: Tools like open Claw aren't something you can just download
Speaker 2: from an app store.
Speaker 3: They require technical setup and a bit of know how.
Speaker 2: That's why in China people are organizing gatherings like the
Speaker 2: one at ten Cents headquarters to help potential users get
Speaker 2: open Claw up and running. Nearly a thousand people showed
Speaker 2: up to that particular meetup, one of many across the
Speaker 2: country this past month.
Speaker 5: I think it really is a vouch for the amount
Speaker 5: of AI enthusiasm that we've seen in China that we
Speaker 5: really haven't seen in other places.
Speaker 2: Catherine Thorbeck is a Bloomberg Opinion tech columnist based in Tokyo.
Speaker 5: When you have local governments coming out and signaling support
Speaker 5: and sort of the big tech players and the small
Speaker 5: startups and the model builders all jumping on this bandwagon
Speaker 5: at once, I think it really created this sort of
Speaker 5: title wave of you know, it just shows how fast
Speaker 5: technology trends can really spread China.
Speaker 2: China has the most open claw users in the world,
Speaker 2: almost double the activity in the US. That's according to
Speaker 2: cybersecurity firm Security Scorecard. But as the hype surrounding open
Speaker 2: Class surged, so has the scrutiny. The initial enthusiasm for
Speaker 2: the technology is now being met with caution, as users
Speaker 2: in China's government way whether the benefits of the tool
Speaker 2: justify the risk of such deep access.
Speaker 5: When you give these tools access to your personal data,
Speaker 5: your personal files, your computer, and then you also give
Speaker 5: them permission to take action. The amount of things that
Speaker 5: can go wrong really just compounds. So there have been
Speaker 5: reports of these tools sort of going rogue and you know,
Speaker 5: deleting all of your emails or deleting all of sort
Speaker 5: of your personal files.
Speaker 3: This is the Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm Wanha.
Speaker 2: Every week we take you inside some of the world's
Speaker 2: biggest and most powerful economies and the markets, tycoons and
Speaker 2: businesses that drive this.
Speaker 3: Ever shifting region.
Speaker 2: Today in the show, China's rushed toward open Claw. What
Speaker 2: the technology does, why it took off so fast in
Speaker 2: the country, and what it tells us about the risks
Speaker 2: and realities of AI's next base. When open Claw launched
Speaker 2: in November of last year, it took off right away.
Speaker 2: Part of that success was the product itself. Open Clau's
Speaker 2: founder describes it as AI that actually does things. One
Speaker 2: of the tech world's biggest names, Jensen Huang of Nvidia,
Speaker 2: called it the single most important release of software probably ever.
Speaker 2: The other part of that success the popularity of the lobster.
Speaker 4: The logo open claw looks like a very cute cartoonish lobster.
Speaker 4: It looks like Aminion from the Menims movie, but then
Speaker 4: it's read and it has claws. Also spicy lobster. It's
Speaker 4: very favorite dish in China. Part of the fan fair
Speaker 4: is also because of that.
Speaker 2: Spend five minutes at an open claw event and you'll
Speaker 2: see lobster hats, lobster plushies, and you'll hear a phrase
Speaker 2: that's become popular in China, yng loncha, which roughly translates
Speaker 2: to raising lobsters loose? What is raising lobsters?
Speaker 4: Raising means that you first install it and then you
Speaker 4: spend time with it, and of course spend money on it,
Speaker 4: and then open clall learns what you like and dislike. Say,
Speaker 4: it learns different skills, and it's like raising a pat,
Speaker 4: only the pet is a virtual AI assistant that can
Speaker 4: work for you.
Speaker 2: A virtual AI assistant also known as an AI agent.
Speaker 2: These agents are based on large language models from open
Speaker 2: ai and Anthropic, but you don't just chat with them.
Speaker 2: You can figure them to do things for you. Come
Speaker 2: through emails, book flights, and appointments. They can even trade
Speaker 2: crypto or negotiate a deal for car for you, depending
Speaker 2: on how much access you granted. And while Openclaw is
Speaker 2: hugely popular in China, it isn't a Chinese product. It
Speaker 2: was created by Peter Steinberger, a developer from Austria. But
Speaker 2: since the AI tool is open source, it's free for
Speaker 2: anyone to use or modify. Earlier this year, Chinese developers
Speaker 2: started tinkering with it and it took on a life
Speaker 2: of its own in China.
Speaker 4: Since after China came back from the Lunar New Year holiday,
Speaker 4: there were more discussions about it on social media and
Speaker 4: then a lot of people wanted to try it. It's
Speaker 4: a very new tool that promises a lot of things
Speaker 4: that the previous AI tools cannot do.
Speaker 2: In China, AI is very much a part of daily
Speaker 2: life right now. The country's most popular AI app, Gobao,
Speaker 2: has roughly two hundred twenty seven million active users every month.
Speaker 2: That's almost double that of deep Sicks.
Speaker 3: But even in AI.
Speaker 2: Hyped China, the popularity of open Class stands out.
Speaker 4: We live in a very competitive society in China, and
Speaker 4: starting from kids, we were told that you need to
Speaker 4: always be at the front. You need to do your
Speaker 4: best all the time, otherwise you will leg behind. And
Speaker 4: then with there's something new and then people's reactions are
Speaker 4: usually just to jump on it before everybody else and
Speaker 4: not be late. For example, I talked to this computer
Speaker 4: engineer in Shinjin who after starting using AI agents, he's
Speaker 4: been using it all the time, and he was telling
Speaker 4: me that he couldn't even go to sleep without giving
Speaker 4: some task for his AI to do. And then one
Speaker 4: of our colleagues in China, she talked to this office
Speaker 4: worker whose boss told her to use AI otherwise you
Speaker 4: get fired. Really, the bosses are anxious as well, because
Speaker 4: they also want to have their employees to be very
Speaker 4: productive with AI and then to make more money.
Speaker 2: Part of that anxiety comes from pressure at the top.
Speaker 2: In China, the push for AI is coming from the
Speaker 2: highest levels of the government, and AI even made its
Speaker 2: way into President Siegenping's New Year address this year.
Speaker 1: Curzy s many large AI models have been competing in
Speaker 1: a race to the top, and breakthroughs have been achieved
Speaker 1: in the research and development of our own chips. All
Speaker 1: this has turned China into one of the economies with
Speaker 1: the fastest growing innovation capability.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Opinions Katherine Thorbeck says the government is aggressively driving
Speaker 2: this AI push.
Speaker 5: The government really wants to be a world leader when
Speaker 5: it comes to AI technology, and when you look at
Speaker 5: the AI plus plan that they rolled out last year,
Speaker 5: they really are trying to use AI to solve a
Speaker 5: lot of sort of societal problems, whether that's boosting consumption,
Speaker 5: which it's not totally clear how AI will do that,
Speaker 5: but they definitely are trying to integrate AI into as
Speaker 5: many facets of society as possible. And then another reason
Speaker 5: I think that it's moving so fast in China is
Speaker 5: because of the open source embrace. All of the big
Speaker 5: Chinese AI model builders are really going full steam ahead
Speaker 5: on open source, which means they're putting out their new models,
Speaker 5: they're putting out the weights for them, they're free for
Speaker 5: people to use and download. And I think as a
Speaker 5: result of that, this whole ecosystem of developers and tinkers
Speaker 5: can all sort of look at the code and move
Speaker 5: things along a lot faster.
Speaker 2: In other words, when AI becomes a political priority, tech
Speaker 2: trends like open claw can move quickly. Several local governments
Speaker 2: have already backed that momentum by offering more than a
Speaker 2: million dollars in subsidies to support open claw and similar
Speaker 2: open source projects, and the country's tech giants have followed suit.
Speaker 2: Ten Cent and buy Do launch their own versions of
Speaker 2: open claw in March, using them as a way to
Speaker 2: pull people onto their page platforms. Loose tried some of
Speaker 2: them out for herself.
Speaker 4: Now there are a lot of cloud based offers that
Speaker 4: you can raise the observer on the cloud so it
Speaker 4: doesn't access your local desktop and local files. I chose
Speaker 4: two platforms. One is from ali Baba and it was
Speaker 4: a free service. Another two that's under by Dance. It's
Speaker 4: TikTok's parent company. I paid ninety nine per month and
Speaker 4: that's about fourteen to fifteen dollars. Once you paid for
Speaker 4: a month, you have a certain amount of tokens or
Speaker 4: credits that you can use. If you, for example, wanted
Speaker 4: to start your email, you need to granted the access
Speaker 4: to your email and then it will do it.
Speaker 3: And what did you ask it to do for you?
Speaker 4: I asked it to send news briefs about the companies
Speaker 4: that I cover as a journalist. It did not do
Speaker 4: a very good job because the news resources that it
Speaker 4: can access is very limited. And now it just asked
Speaker 4: it to send me a cat photo every hour.
Speaker 3: A cat photo every hour.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what I need in my life.
Speaker 2: But beneath the novelty, there's a serious difference between open
Speaker 2: claw and traditional AI chat bots like deep seek and
Speaker 2: chat GBT, and that's the amount of access these tools require.
Speaker 4: For open Claw, you need to give it a lot
Speaker 4: of access. For example, it needs to read your files
Speaker 4: to swart your file. It need to access your editing
Speaker 4: software to edit for you. And if you wanted to
Speaker 4: buy things for you, you need to give it to your
Speaker 4: credits information, which is kind of a redfleg.
Speaker 2: Beijing may be all in on the idea of spurring
Speaker 2: innovation with AI, but open claus powerful capabilities are giving
Speaker 2: the government pause after the break.
Speaker 3: Why the sweeping access.
Speaker 2: Granted to AI agents makes Chinese regulators uneasy, and why
Speaker 2: some Chinese users are shying away from it too. While
Speaker 2: open Claw has been embraced by users, tech giants, and
Speaker 2: even some local governments in China, the response from Beijing
Speaker 2: has been more restrained.
Speaker 5: Open Clay open there.
Speaker 2: The Chinese government has issued a security alert on the
Speaker 2: risks of using open Claw, emphasizing that users might be
Speaker 2: susceptible to cyber attacks and data leaks. Bloomberg's loose Ding
Speaker 2: and Bloomberg opinions. Katherine Thorbeck say regulators have allowed the
Speaker 2: tool to spread, but with clear limits.
Speaker 4: The military that's overseeing technology industry has issued warnings about
Speaker 4: the security risk of this tool. State media also posted
Speaker 4: articles about how to use open claw safely. Then they
Speaker 4: were also authority spanning the use of open claw in
Speaker 4: sensitive industries like government agencies, banks.
Speaker 5: So I think the government is very aware of the risks,
Speaker 5: and I think they're just trying to strike that balance
Speaker 5: between embracing innovation and seeing where this takes them. And
Speaker 5: also they're obviously very concerned about sort of data leaks
Speaker 5: and data privacy.
Speaker 2: That caution centers on one big question, what happens when
Speaker 2: these tools are given broad access to people's data and devices.
Speaker 2: You mentioned the security risks associated with open claw, What
Speaker 2: are those and what can go wrong?
Speaker 5: Oh gosh, So when it comes to the cybersecurity risks
Speaker 5: for open claw, I'm not even sure where to start.
Speaker 5: I think when you give these tools access to your
Speaker 5: personal data, your personal files, your computer, and then you
Speaker 5: also give them permission to take action, the amount of
Speaker 5: things that can go wrong really just compounds. So there
Speaker 5: have been reports of these tools sort of going rogue
Speaker 5: and you know, deleting all of your emails or deleting
Speaker 5: all of sort of your personal files. So that's one
Speaker 5: side of it, and then on the other side, I
Speaker 5: think it also sort of invites all sorts of new
Speaker 5: sort of cybersecurity attackers and cyber attackers. And so the
Speaker 5: way I sort of think about it is, if you remember,
Speaker 5: like the two thousands Internet, when we were all just
Speaker 5: kind of downloading various softwares onto our PC, and none
Speaker 5: of us really knew what we were downloading, but there
Speaker 5: was definitely a curiosity, but we might not have understood
Speaker 5: that we're also downloading all these viruses. So I think
Speaker 5: we're seeing some of that as well with people, because,
Speaker 5: as I mentioned, you need some little bit of a
Speaker 5: tech background to really use open claw and plug ins
Speaker 5: and sort of the things that you can do on
Speaker 5: top of it. So I think people are downloading all
Speaker 5: kinds of things and not totally aware of what they're
Speaker 5: installing and what sort of permissions they're granting.
Speaker 2: By now people in China have had some time to
Speaker 2: play around with open claw, I want to talk about
Speaker 2: how Chinese users are feeling about the tool. Now you know,
Speaker 2: after the initial excitement and frenzy, there have you heard
Speaker 2: about this one lobster freeway saying that's trending on Chinese
Speaker 2: social media?
Speaker 5: Yes, this sort of hashtag that you're referring to that
Speaker 5: has taken off now. One lobster three ways refers to
Speaker 5: paying somebody to install open claw for them, and then
Speaker 5: paying somebody else or a lot of times that same
Speaker 5: person to uninstall open claw for them, and then also
Speaker 5: paying them to clean up the mess that open Claw
Speaker 5: might have left behind on their computer, whether that's deleting
Speaker 5: files or swing all kinds of chaos. So I definitely
Speaker 5: think that the initial excitement has moderated a little bit.
Speaker 2: But even as the hype settles, Catherine says, it's clear
Speaker 2: that China's big tech companies are betting on agenic Ai
Speaker 2: to be the next big driver of growth. The country
Speaker 2: is a testing ground for it, and what happens next
Speaker 2: is still worth watching.
Speaker 5: I really look at it as this real world experiment
Speaker 5: where regular people are playing around with agentic tools and
Speaker 5: seeing what it can do for their lives, and it
Speaker 5: can actually boost productivity and sort of what the risks are,
Speaker 5: and that's happening at such a massive scale in China,
Speaker 5: and it's really a double edged sword because the more
Speaker 5: permissions and data and access that you give to AI agents,
Speaker 5: the more they can do, and that's really exciting. But
Speaker 5: then at the same time, the flip side of that
Speaker 5: is the more damage they can also cause. So I
Speaker 5: think making AI agents secure isn't something that either side
Speaker 5: has really figured out yet, and I think it's going
Speaker 5: to take a lot of time. I will say that
Speaker 5: one benefit to open claw is that it is open source,
Speaker 5: so that means that the more people at this scale
Speaker 5: that are all using it at the same time, the
Speaker 5: more it sort of hardens it because people are, you know,
Speaker 5: figuring out bugs, then people are sending patches. I think
Speaker 5: if you look at it at the enterprise level, this
Speaker 5: has the potential to be absolutely enormous, and I think
Speaker 5: in ways that we don't even fully understand, you know.
Speaker 5: I think if you can fully automate the work that
Speaker 5: say an intern does or an entry level worker does,
Speaker 5: I think that can really have profound effects on the
Speaker 5: labor market.
Speaker 2: And in terms of the flip side, where could this
Speaker 2: experiment fail.
Speaker 5: I think in the longer term, you know, as much
Speaker 5: as the tech industry likes to say that AI agents
Speaker 5: are there to empower workers. I don't necessarily buy that.
Speaker 5: I think the goal is really to replace workers, and
Speaker 5: so I think in China that's actually going to be
Speaker 5: a really big thing to watch because youth unemployment has
Speaker 5: remained persistently high since the pandemic, and I think if
Speaker 5: you have large swaths of educated and unemployed young people
Speaker 5: that are looking for jobs and that are being put
Speaker 5: out of work by these AI tools, I think that
Speaker 5: doesn't bode well for social stability, and I think that
Speaker 5: will be sort of a big test for the Chinese government.
Speaker 5: I think in the near term we'll have to see
Speaker 5: how much this actually sticks and if people are actually
Speaker 5: able to build trust with AI agents.
Speaker 2: And ultimately, Catherine says, how China handles tools like Openclaw
Speaker 2: could shape the next phase of the global AI race.
Speaker 5: Building the top of the line frontier models is side
Speaker 5: of it, and then the other side of the sort
Speaker 5: of AI race is diffusion and how do you integrate
Speaker 5: AI into as many facets of the economy and as
Speaker 5: many facets of society as possible. And I think we're
Speaker 5: seeing China really pick up on the diffusion race. We're
Speaker 5: really seeing that they're willing to try out this new technology,
Speaker 5: willing to see how it can increase productivity in their
Speaker 5: personal lives and their work lives, which I think actually
Speaker 5: is the race that we should be watching, because I
Speaker 5: think that's where you really see the biggest benefits from
Speaker 5: major tech evolutions in history. I think from that perspective,
Speaker 5: it definitely shows that China is sort of leaping ahead
Speaker 5: when it comes to AI. They're embracing it, they're using it,
Speaker 5: they're experimenting, and I think in doing so, they're also
Speaker 5: sort of making their own models better. You know, they're
Speaker 5: giving real world feedback to their own models, and I
Speaker 5: think that just only improves them. So I think that
Speaker 5: could really tip the scales in the long run when
Speaker 5: it comes to this broader sort of AI race.
Speaker 3: This is The Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm wanha.
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