"After renting a cloud server from Tencent and buying a subscription to the Chinese large language model Kimi, Zhang could start chatting with his OpenClaw agent, or his "lobster," as many Chinese people call theirs. At first, Zhang tells me, he was impressed by the AI agent as he watched it quickly generate a long market analysis based on the latest breaking news."
"Zhang's conclusion was that OpenClaw is not designed for people like him who don't have any coding skills. "It would tell me I needed to configure the API port. But that's a technical task, not something I can do unless I had a tutorial walking me through it step-by-step," he says."
"Workshops teaching people how to use the AI agent have popped up in cities across the country, drawing crowds of hundreds. Tech companies are racing to integrate OpenClaw into their platforms, while local governments have announced subsidies for entrepreneurs building products with it."
OpenClaw, a viral AI agent software, generated significant enthusiasm across China, with workshops attracting hundreds and governments offering subsidies for development. George Zhang, a cross-border ecommerce worker, attempted to use OpenClaw for autonomous stock portfolio management after seeing an influencer demonstration. Initially impressed by the agent's market analysis capabilities, Zhang encountered persistent technical failures and performance degradation. The software demanded technical configuration tasks like API port setup that exceeded his non-coding skillset. Zhang ultimately abandoned the platform, concluding OpenClaw was unsuitable for users without programming knowledge, highlighting a gap between marketing promises and practical accessibility.
Read at WIRED
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