The other day, I was running errands at a local neighbourhood mall and came across various food stalls having chilli crab flavours on their menus — chilli crab popiah, chilli crab fried rice, chilli crab pasta.
Then I passed by Subway and, guess what — chilli crab subs on its menu.
Yummy! So what happens to their claws?
Then there are those claw machines where their plush toys seem to have a magnetic attraction for kids and adults alike. The machines that I saw are aptly named “Fun Claw.”
Talking about “claws”, there is another different species in cyberspace.
In early February this year, CNBC had an article on OpenClaw entitled “From Clawdbot to Moltbot to OpenClaw: Meet the AI agent generating buzz and fear globally.” Read the CNBC article
This piqued my curiosity further and, while doing more research, I stumbled upon the Facebook page of our Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan. There is a video, “Built a personal AI Agent - why I did that and what it means.” In the video, he shared how he used NanoClaw on a Pi 5. Watch the Facebook video
For the curious and techie folks, here is the link to GitHub where he documented the details. Read his NanoClaw GitHub Gist
With the increasing interest in Agentic AI, a proliferation of “Claws” has started to appear in cyberspace — NanoClaw, PicoClaw, ZeroClaw, NemoClaw, IronClaw, MicroClaw and others.
So, what do they do?
In a nutshell, these Claws are like personal aides or assistants. They use an AI model (LLM) as their brain, together with various tools, to get things done.
Isn’t traditional AI (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and others) sufficient?
Perhaps.
Let us look at the two scenarios below.
Suppose you want to find the cheapest airfare to a certain destination.
In the first scenario, that would suffice. You ask a question, and it gives you some answers. You seek further clarification, and it comes back with more answers. That’s it!
In scenario two, the “Claws” act like my employee. I give them the instruction to find the cheapest flight, book it, and then email the booking details to me.
So, off they go into their digital world, use some tools, make some decisions and get the job done, coming back to me when they need my intervention.
Caveat
I am by no means an expert in AI — just a senior trying to make sense of the rapidly changing world of AI around me in ways that I can understand — in simple layman’s terms.
The distinction I make in this article is deliberately simplified. Today’s AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity are also increasingly capable of using tools and performing agentic tasks.