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"lessons learned" (lemmy.ml)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/fuck_ai@lemmy.world
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screenshot of followup to the first tweet, also by @BenjaminDEKR: " Made some adjustments based on lessons learned. Combined: roughly 200-400x cheaper heartbeat operation."

https://xcancel.com/BenjaminDEKR/status/2017660150463582282

via this bluesky post:

screenshot of bluesky post by @rusty.todayintabs.com with text "I’m starting to think the people who are excited about “AI agents” have literally never used a computer in their lives" and screenshots of the above tweets

screenshot of tweet by @BenjaminDEKR with text: OpenClaw is interesting, but will also drain your wallet if you aren't careful. Last night around midnight I loaded my Anthropic API account with $20, then went to bed. When I woke up, my Anthropic balance was $0. Opus was checking "is it daytime yet?" every 30 minutes, paying $0.75 each time to conclude "no, it's still night." Doing literally nothing, OpenClaw spent the entire balance. How? The "Heartbeat" cron job, even though literally the only thing I had going was one silly reminder, ("remind me tomorrow to get milk") 1. Sent ~120,000 tokens of context to Opus 4.5 2. Opus read HEARTBEAT .md, thought about reminders 3. Replied "HEARTBEAT_OK" 4. Cost: ~$0.75 per heartbeat (cache writes) The damage: - Overnight = ~25+ heartbeats - 25 × $0.75 = ~$18.75 just from heartbeats alone - Plus regular conversation = ~$20 total The absurdity: Opus was essentially checking "is it daytime yet?" every 30 minutes, paying $0.75 each time to conclude "no, it's still night." The problem is: 1. Heartbeat uses Opus (most expensive model) for a trivial check 2. Sends the entire conversation context (~120k tokens) each time 3. Runs every 30 minutes regardless of whether anything needs checking That's $750 a month if this runs, to occasionally remind me stuff? Yeah, no. Not great.
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[–] 62 points 9 months ago (14 children)

I'm extremely confused. Why is he checking the time every hour 14 times a day? I understand he's trying to test AI out so he's doing something trivial, but I feel like I'm having an aneurism reading this. This is still not an optimal way to do reminders. Am I just really dumb or is this nonsense?

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  • [–] 42 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    He told it to remind him to get milk the next day. The artificial stupidity set up a cron job to check if it was "tomorrow" every so often before it reminded him. He's a moron for paying for a completely wasteful stupid system that wasted his money.

    A fool and his money are soon parted

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  • [–] 16 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Oh, I understand that, but then if you look at the table, he says he improved it and it's still checking 14 hours a day.

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  • [–] 13 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    Open claw is an agenic AI agent that interfaces with LLMs to do stuff like this. Apparently in the dumbest way possible.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    I understand that, but he says he made some adjustments and after those it's still checking 14 times a day? He seems satisfied with that outcome and I am just not sure if I'm misinformed or if there's a reason that after the improvements it's still requiring all those checks. It seems like the initial outcome was stupid, but I don't understand why his improved outcome is viewed as an acceptable way to accomplish that task.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago

    He is so far down his psychotic brain death he doesn't even recognise the ridiculousness of his solution. That's why he is satisfied, even though for you it's obvious there are better solutions that don't involve an LLM.

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  • [–] 9 points 9 months ago

    feel like I'm having an aneurism reading this.

    You accurately described what I was feeling too. Like, it was so atrocious to read, because I wanted to figure out what he was talking about and understand it, when I knew that it didn't make sense and he was an idiot. But I kept rereading it because I wanted to be wrong and realize what he really meant.

    But no, he's just a fucking idiot. He's on twatter, so it makes sense...

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