Would You Give an AI Your Computer? (OpenClaw Lesson)

Kevin Tunis

2h • General Discussion 💬

If an AI agent asked for full system access today… would you say yes?

The OpenClaw (formerly Clawdbot) situation exposed something important for all of us building with AI agents:

The tension between what these agents can do and what they must be allowed to access to do it.

This isn’t about one tool.

It’s about how we think about agent architecture going forward.

My current stance:

Treat an AI agent like a new employee.

You don’t hand over master keys on day one.

Separate machine or VPS

Separate accounts

Read-only first

Expand trust slowly

The demos are exciting.

The access model is what deserves scrutiny.

You’ve probably seen the examples:

“The agent built my dashboard while I slept”
“It monitors my email and tasks all day”
“It handles things before I even ask”

At the same time, security folks are pointing out what happens when new, fast-moving tools with deep access meet misconfiguration and hype.

So I want real operator input from this community.

Questions

Would you ever allow an AI agent to run on a machine that has access to your files and accounts? Why or why not?
If you did experiment with this, what safeguards are non-negotiable first?

(separate machine, separate accounts, read-only, etc.)

3. After the Clawdbot → Moltbot → OpenClaw rename and chaos, what trust signals would you now require before installing a tool like this?

4.The “AI built this while I slept” demo — exciting, or a red flag?

What tasks would you allow full autonomy for, and which tasks would always require your approval?

Quick Context

A fast-growing AI agent project had to rename due to trademark pressure. During the confusion, scammers and impersonators appeared, and security researchers found exposed control panels where users had misconfigured their setups.

At the same time, creators are showing incredible demos of what these agents can do when given deep access.

This feels like a real inflection point for how we approach AI agents in real workflows.

Reply with your stance and your minimum safeguards.

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