In an obscure post, a Mozilla MLE announced a ClawBot ripoff specifically targeted at at tradespeople (electricians, plumbers, roofers, handymen) for help with administrative tasks like scheduling, explaining invoices, etc.
What is their project, ClawBolt? According to their website, it’s a compilation of
- A flaky AI agent you run on your computer
- A Telegram chatbot to remotely control it
- A connection to OpenAI to parse all of it
This sounds like a dangerous project to target at tradesmen, doesn’t it? AI marketing tells people that AI is smart and safe and powerful when it is anything but. If Facebook’s top AI safety genius nearly destroyed her own email inbox, how will a plumber fare?
One of the features of ClawBolt is “memory,” something that will store and possibly corrupt questions and answers like “What’s Mrs. Johnson’s address?” and “My hourly rate is $95”.
But it gets worse: ClawBolt documentation says it can scan images to “get help identifying fixtures”
Remember the memes making fun of AI’s inability to make wiring diagrams?
I can only imagine how bad this could make things for tradespeople - in addition to violating customer privacy, getting gaslit by a non-deterministic “memory” machine, and potentially breaking their work computers.
In my experience ai can’t distinguish between a 5-15p and 6-20r, how useful could it be for an actual electrician
Did any of you read the actual post? It’s not designed to do electrical or plumbing work or whatever. It’s to “help with administrative tasks like scheduling, explaining invoices, etc.”
If an AI is used by an electrician and it results in them doing unsafe work. They are a terrible electrician that would do unsafe work without AI and should lose their license yesterday.
You don’t need to be an electrician to install a plug in Britain, in fact they sometimes sell appliances without plugs in Britain, so your excuse is irrelevant.
Heh fuck me dead. Ai famously is terrible at basic arithmetic. It would be suicidal to use it for invoices.
It’s the same in Sweden and so what? I doubt this AI will be generally available or at least that the public would like to use an AI designed for invoices and shit to wire a plug.
And in Sweden at least, you are only allowed to wire a plug if you know what you are doing.
Why would it be better at those tasks ?
I don’t fucking know. But saying it’s dangerous is fucking ridiculous.