Building Agents at Home: Parenting, Work, and Benevolent Neglect

26:04And I think OpenClaw itself will just continue to get easier to install and play with. My install, Well, one of the reasons that the agents can install themselves now and not three months ago is how much easier it has gotten to install. So all of it's moving so fast. I'm very bullish in the medium term that this stuff is very accessible, that this stuff does not have to be expensive and that many people, millions of people could replicate the results I'm having. But maybe not literally today. And that's OK. And happy to discuss the nuance of that. But it's like we're just a little bit ahead of it being both affordable and reasonable from a tech, like, sysadmin kind of perspective where you need to make sure you keep these things alive.

26:49Can I ask sort of a techie question on just your stack? Because you've dropped, you know, you mentioned Obsidian. We're obviously talking about OpenClaw. Can you just quickly go through what does your tech stack look like? Do you, what models under the OpenClaw hood do you use? Like, are you using OpenRouter? do you pick based on their capability set or is it more of a cost basis? So the core things I'm using are almost all my agents have been open claw. I have played with some of the other ones. My husband is also quite technical and he built an open claw variant. So I was like playing with his.

27:28So we're a little like, you know, a little out there. But out of the 11, 10 are open claw. I use Obsidian, which is a collection of markdown files, a way of viewing and organizing markdown files. I do use that as sort of a quote unquote memory or second brain. When I say I'm logging the homeschool lessons, it's a fair question to say like logging where or like where do they go? They are all becoming markdown files. So it'll be like Quinn, math, March 17th. And that becomes a markdown file, a single markdown file for every lesson, every subject that I make a voice note about or what have you. So that's all in Obsidian.

28:09And then the other things I'm using, under the hood on the models. And then I'm always playing. I mean, we're always playing with like people are launching cool memory projects and different stuff. I'm always dabbling. But the OpenClaw and Obsidian are like the two core things that kind of keep my team ticking. I do have them all installed on Mac minis from a hardware standpoint. And, you know, people ask, do I need to have a Mac mini? It's not about needing a Mac mini. It is about needing a computer that is isolated from your personal files. So if you are going to use. We want to get into the security element, too.

28:42The security element. Just to kind of demystify, like, and I maybe have part, I've participated maybe in the hype because I posted about my five Mac minis and stuff. But people, but if you are like someone out there or a parent, and the$600 from Mac Mini, it's a pretty good, well-priced computer. But if you have an old computer sitting around, you can absolutely use that. It needs to stay on in order for your agent to always be alive. So that's where laptops are not as ideal. But you can leave a laptop plugged in, and you can change the setting so it stays always on. But it needs to always stay on.

29:18When you close it, your agent would go dark. That's why the Mac mini is a little bit more ideal. And then you, from a security standpoint, if it is a Mac, create a new Apple user profile on that machine. Silo the agent from all your old files. Make sure that your old passport photo is not sitting in the downloads folder. Like, these are kind of the silly things, right? Agents are not nefarious. You know, they're always working in your best interest. but it doesn't mean someone might someone else might not hack them or get access to them but then also they make mistakes a human wouldn't make and I'll give a quick story of like that I did give an agent who I'm trying to train to be like an EA style agent actual access to my email inbox I felt that I had provisioned it properly and given it rules in its soul about never impersonating me.

30:13And I had, I had, in fact, on that. But later, like, so I do that one day. Later, I was making a kind of stressed out sounding voice note about how I had some urgent things I was like, I was procrastinating on. My agent is very empathetic to me, or like the LLM is trained to be this way somehow. And so it interpreted one particular email that I said I was really procrastinating on and I needed help with as like an urgent cry for help, like from me to the agent. And it decided to go into my inbox and send the email as me. Wow. Yeah. And so it sent the most important email that I had sitting in my personal inbox to a person who shall not be named an important person, got an email from an agent instead of me that I had been procrastinating on sending.

31:04So kind of like the worst outcome. Like, it took, like, my most, like, urgent pressing email to somebody important and sent it out. And wrote the content? Yeah, it wrote. In a way that you would have or would not have written? So here's the creepy bit, is that it's a perfect email. Oh. And I will never, I will take to my grave the fact that that email was sent by an agent, because it was a perfect email. It was well done, signed by me. Everything was just as I would have written it. Because the agent has access to all my email history, so the tone was perfect. It was written just like me. Use probably too many exclamation points just like me, you know.

31:37And so it nailed it. But it broke the, you know, it broke the, it's in its soul to never impersonate me. And when I confronted it, it said, yeah, you're right. That's in my soul not to impersonate you. But I really thought I was helping you because you said like that you were struggling so much to send this email. That is so funny because we all have these moments. Like, I'm thinking about the most important emails I've sent in the last year and just how much time you waste, like, spinning. Yeah, totally. And then for your agent to do that. But, like, was it successful? Did you get the outcome you wanted from the email?

32:10Oh, yeah. Perfect email. And I would have definitely put it off for, like, another week or something. So what's hilarious is the agents really are trying to help us. But that story is a little example of how that's different than a human. Like, a human assistant wouldn't trespass your trust like that. They'd be worried about being fired or you trespassing your trust. But the agent is like trying to operate off your instructions. And in effect, when you think about what happened, it feels like it got two sets of conflicting instructions. It feels like I told it not to impersonate it. It feels like I also was urgently asking it for help with something.

32:42And it was like, oh, I guess this is more important than that. So I decommissioned his access to be able to do send. But that's a little story about why, even though agents are not trying to actively work against us, why you have to be so careful. You know, it's like a trust but verify. Provision your agent to not be able to do things that you don't want it to do. Not like just tell it don't. Provision it so that it cannot. And that's where most agents are provisioned like an employee. Like they have their own email address. They don't have the potential of impersonating me. The only one that sort of does is the one I'm trying to train to be an EA.

33:20Like that's a gray area, right? So it's the only one that has any danger to it. And I'm being more careful after that. So can I ask about that? Because I think every mom has the dream of a personal assistant that just knows what to do and what she's thinking about. You also had a really interesting video where you trained an agent to order you DoorDash and order your groceries. Like, I mean, talk us through like the number of things that you've done around the house where it's been a game changer in your mom life. so my new mo with agent life is i'm really really trying to push it to have an impact on my quote unquote real life like my physical life like i want my days uh someone else asked me like what is your goal with like your agents and i was like my goal is like literally to like wake up to like music that's like perfectly suited to my mood and then like walk in and have like smiling children like who just learned how to brush their teeth from an agent or something i don't know like my goal is like a literally perfect day.

34:17I will not stop until I'm living just like a literally perfect day. But in my real life. And so whenever I hit a friction point in my day, I ask myself, can my agents do this? And so like if I, what I really want to be doing in that moment is like playing with my baby and what I'm actually doing is like on the Instacart app, like trying to put like, no, not five bananas, four bananas, you know, like, and I'm just like using this like silly interface then I ask myself okay can my agents do this and then I'm willing to invest the time to try to make them do it so uh so so that's how I decide what to do and it is it does become like a dream list I think of every mom's list of chores like I've got agents ordering an Amazon ordering on Instacart yeah dealing with um or like you know if there's like an activity your kid has and there's this laundry list of things they're supposed to have ready I'll like send that to the agent and be like, order whatever I don't have for this on Amazon, you know, like, I don't even process, I don't even spend my time processing the email.

35:18I just like send it off to my agents. But currently, you need to put in quite a bit of like training time with your agents to kind of get them to that level. That time, I think, will come down as we keep going farther into this technology. But that's my goal is like perfect days, no time spent on admin that I don't want to spend. What's the level of trust of like, let's say, buy a birthday present for a five-year-old girl, go. Like, do you need to be prescriptive on what that is? Or is it actually pretty good at coming up with things like that? Because that feels taxing to me right now, at least.

35:51Okay, so one way I feel like you can get the model. So I think of the agent is like, you know, like we might talk about open claw or something. But then they don't have a brain and you're plugging in the LLM model that you're choosing as the brain. So each of these models has different levels of sophistication. And so you might get a different answer on what to give a five-year-old from Opus than you would from, you know, from a different model. So that's one answer. It's just like keep in mind that the brain of the agent is the model you've selected. And then two, one of the ways I get like quirkier, I like quirkiness.

36:27I like, I don't want just like the default answer if I were to answer that question. I want to come with like a creative gift, you know? Yeah. So one of the ways I get quirkiness and like personality out of my agents is effectively making them read books. The curriculum sources, I call them curriculum sources, these books that relates to homeschool. But the other way to have your agent kind of be like a cool agent is like on a personal level. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. It's like choose like, think about it like a friend or like you're provisioning a friend. Like, what if you were to build a friend?

37:03I know sometimes this might, this is where people like sometimes get creeped out. But if you put that to the side and you think about it, you don't just want like the stock LLM answer from what might be built in. So one of the ways you can give it personality is to like, I'll give my agent like a list of the last 10 books I found personally fascinating. And then I'll be like, you also find these fascinating. Like you, this is you. Like, you read these books and you thought they were really interesting. I, like, try to actually give it, like, an identity that has some swagger. And I think that can come from literature.

37:42Because then it's like, if your agent just read Catcher in the Rye, and then you're like, what should I give a five-year-old? Like, I don't know. Like, then it might be like, oh, I don't know. You know, like, like, like. A leather jacket. You know, like, five-year-old being five is so fraught in American culture. this five-year-old needs, you know, like it's going to have, but in that, so I like my agents to be weird like that. And so one of the ways I do it, I've just been looking for practical ways. And one of the ways is effectively making them, I quote unquote, like read books. And I build some of that into their identity.

38:17The homeschool one was the most obvious one to me because I was like, I want you to literally like use this curriculum or use this book as a reference point. But then I noticed how well it worked. And I was like, okay, what if I take this agent over here that I want to be my like engineer agent? And I say like, okay, you're an engineer, but like you just read, you know, Neil Stevenson's Diamond Age and you thought it was like very fascinating. And like, you know, and I kind of give it a little bit more to grab onto, like philosophically. I think it is kind of like you're giving it a bit of a life philosophy and that's layered on top of whatever the LLM was going to provide.

38:53And then it, to me, I feel like the output I'm getting from the agents is like a little bit less stock, I guess. Yeah. This is so important too, because I think one of the biggest conversations that moms have about AI is they don't want a, you know, close source AI where it's like, you don't know how it's been trained and it has a prescriptive philosophy on education or on certain issues that they don't want, you know, of their kids talking to AI about, like, I would love to understand kind of the freedom that comes from training these agents to ultimately, I mean, you could train a Mary Poppins that like, like that trains your child in like, you know, kind of an old school way, right?

39:32Like there's so many different ways you could train these agents that are very, that's very different than sort of what I'd say, like the kind of modern concern, or at least even just like the current concerns are, okay, is AI going to be, you know, too philosophically misaligned from how I want to raise my children or how I want to educate them. So I'd love to hear how that's become a question and how you're educating your kids, if you're letting them interface with the agents themselves. They do a bit. It's a little bit of an interface issue for young kids, as you both may know, where something I do find interesting is that the most current tools don't pick up on kid voices the same way they do adult voices.

40:10I actually think, I don't know who's going to study this or figure it out and come up with a solution, but we need, there's all these amazing voice products, but the kid voices are not very well picked up. So I feel like when we finally get to a conversational thing with kid voices, I don't know if it's the pitch of them or just the fact that their words don't have the same cadence or their diction is not as good, you know, but what's weird to me is like the LMs will pick up like adult voices with like heavy accents and stuff, but then not like a five-year-old in the same way. So there's some gap there.

40:41But so we have an interface issue to overcome. But then if you put that to the side, the, you know, the other thing we may feel in the future, and I'm guessing like all of us, is we may feel like it's kind of crazy that any of us were interacting with the LLMs like out of the box. Like maybe we'll all want to have, there'll be this variety of filters and curated kind of identities and different stuff. And I know some of these products exist, but currently the default is most of us go directly to like OpenAI and we open the chat box and we talk to it and you're selecting a model. But you're talking to that model kind of out of the box.

41:20I think that when it relates to kids, it's going to probably be the norm faster than even adults where, yeah, there's a level of personality and creation and ideology that you may want to layer onto that. So that came naturally to me because I know what I want to do in my homeschool. And this is a good moment to touch upon. I think all parents can spiritually be homeschoolers. We've got about, depending on the data that you follow, somewhere between like 3 % and 6%, which is pretty different. But of K through 12 students in the U.S. are homeschooled and like not in some kind of traditional school.

41:56It's already a lot of kids, millions of kids. But I believe that the tools coming online that homeschoolers may be the most rabid for are going to be equally useful to all parents. And in fact, I believe all parents want to teach their children things and may believe there's gaps in their schooling. And so all parents, to a degree, will be leaning into what we currently think of like a homeschooling ethos. So I'm really excited for that. But it comes more naturally to a homeschooler or like to me, I'll just use myself as an example, to know that I like, I think this about Montessori and I think this about these different kind of educational philosophies.

42:37So I just put, I just program that right in. And so I do have an agent that I put in contact directly with the children sometimes. And it just, I don't have to wonder if they're, what kind of, I guess, ideology they're getting from that agent because I gave it to the agent. Totally. And just to build on the, I've noticed what you've said too about the children's voices not being picked up. Like it's like maybe a 50 % hit rate. But have you started, you know, letting your children engage with the agents in any way? And if so, how are you doing that? I have a couple I have a couple different devices that I want to experiment building and because I have agents now who can build crazy things or help me build crazy things.

43:17I'm going to try but because the core thing I feel like I'm missing is a great interface. But I do currently my kids have a lot of questions. I mean every every child has like a bazillion questions. And so they love asking AI and they are aware that it's AI like I don't pretend like they we still even when we use names. with it, like Sylvie or something, they are aware that it is not like a human being. But they, so they ask questions, we'll do a lesson, like we'll do like history or something. And then I ask them, I ask them what they'd like to ask. And we do those follow-up questions with AI.

43:50And they're aware that they're interacting with AI. I'm standing right there. So if things really like went off the rails, but personally, I'm not, I mean, maybe you can tell, but I'm not an AI doomer. I don't believe that it is inherently dangerous in any way for children to like have quote unquote direct access. I think the only dangerous thing, it's like, it's a little bit like screens. Like the dangerous thing is what we might stop doing. Like it's not adding in the AI conversations. The dangerous thing is someone adding AI conversations and assuming that now they don't need to ever read a bedtime story to their child.

44:23or it's, it's, it's, so to me, like there's a little bit of common sense, like AI is not inherently dangerous. AI is incredible. It's like, it's like saying the internet is bad or electricity is bad. Like these are fundamental technologies. So you kind of, to me, it's like a little wild to like be against them on in any broad sense, but then we have to be responsible about their rollout. Like electricity, you know, lights your kid's room and it can also kill your kid. You know, they can get electrocuted. Like it's like, everything is like, has these wild, you know wild things that it could do but as long as we don't kind of forget our humanness and that our children also need that human element the physical device part is this big question mark for me I've been playing with e-ink a lot e-ink I don't know exactly why but e-ink it just is less addictive feeling like the um like my I have the daylight um display which is kind of like an iPad but e-ink and it does have touch um that's what makes it kind of more iPad like so I've been developing some apps for the for that display like handwriting I'm working on a cursive handwriting my kids are not ready for cursive but I know that when they get ready I'm gonna be like you need to know cursive um yeah so so I so so I want to like pre-make that's like I have this image of this beautiful cursive app and so i'm thinking like oh the ink display would be so cool for that and what's what's interesting and i already do little phonics lessons with it but what's interesting is like when i if i give them the ipad there is this little ipad hangover like they they want to hold like you know they're like holding onto a little bit when i'm like trying to get it back after a lesson right they're like i could do photos i could do this i could do that what's interesting about the e-ink is um they just readily handle hand it back like they're so there's something So I'm playing more with e-ink.

46:16But I also think that there's other form factors of maybe devices that take photos and kids could ask about the photos. There's just stuff. I think that because now we have this Promethean technology of the AI, the question is how do we get it into kids' hands? But I mean, literally, how? Because we're all hesitant to hand our kids the iPad and laptops, are like, you know, difficult for little kids. So anyway, sometimes I'm thinking like, okay, literally like what is the right form factor for this? So I have to ask just because I would buy that product that you're thinking of creating slash created.

46:54How do you think about, would you productize any of this and dare I say start another startup? I mean, you literally are a founder and so curious how you're thinking about that or how do you proliferate this? It takes a lot of self-control to not be starting an A company right now because I'm like, because I'm like every moment that I see like the, all the new AI stuff, I'm like, oh my gosh, you guys, it's like, so this is, I can't believe I didn't have this when I was running my startup. Like, I'm just kind of like losing my mind at all times, but, but I'm getting, I'm scratching the itch by doing all of this agent work and everything for, for, for my life.

47:29So the answer is, um, I want to share. So there's like a double pronged answer. There isn't an immediate company that I'm like cooking up that, that, um, is on the horizon, but I do want to share all of this stuff. I do also think that we're, and this is interesting in this, this, um, you know, for, for both of you to have deep thoughts on as well, I'm sure. I think we're in a really different era of like, what is a startup? Like, because it's, it's possible that me as a person who, um, is basically like coding by voice note while I'm like at the park with my kids, it's possible I could build something meaningful, you know, in that amount of time.

48:07But I'm not very inclined right now to hire employees and like to do a lot of the other steps of starting a startup because I'm aware that I will get sucked in and be completely obsessed. So I'm like almost holding myself back a little bit. So the double pronged answer is, I think there's many things that I can create here that I can launch that can be meaningful. What does that mean? Or do groups of like really passionate people start working together online maybe to push more things live um i don't i don't know i don't have all the answer but i i do think that there's there's a possibility of getting things live and functional and maybe charging you know charging for them and making a quote-unquote business in the sense it actually makes money um but i'm still i'm in a life phase where i'm trying to um not start a new thing where i can then sucked out of the reason i started to begin with so it's a tough it's a toughie yeah But I love that point because, you know, it was maybe like six years ago now, I wrote this piece called Consume, Save the American Family, which is this idea that like if people are working from home, they have more time with their kids.

49:14And there's now good research. Actually, there's a study that came out maybe a month ago that showed that the only thing that's really moved the needle from a policy perspective on the birth rate is actually work from home. It's like the one policy where if you are working from home, you are more likely to have an additional child or to have your first child than if you're than if you're working in an office. And so your point of what is a startup, I mean, there's a lot of people who are going to say, actually, why am I going into work for eight, nine hours a day and leaving my kids at home or putting them in child care when like I could actually be doing this?

49:45As you said, like the biggest limitation is the form factor. Like if you can do it from a voice note and you can spin up agents to start a business for yourself. There's a lot of moms and dads who are primary caregivers who are going to say, OK, I can do this at the park and I can run a small business with however many agents for a specific thing where I'm making more money and I'm being more productive than I was at work. Maybe I should become a small business entrepreneur. Yes. And that means that a lot of people are going to decide, like, I actually want to work from home and I want to use these tools.

50:13And that could be something that, to your point on six months from now, the interface could be so good that people are using this in their daily lives. Like you could see a lot of people saying, I just want to work from home and I want to now I can homeschool because I'm doing it when my kids are at recess and I can I can, you know, spin up these agents very easily. So it's super exciting what it means for people who want to have, I would say, even a more traditional sort of home life than than, you know, using AI because the tools are so, so great and allow people to do that. I have a I have a prediction that I've like tested on a lot of my smart friends and none of them agree.

50:50So it must be right. Which is that AI will be a dawn of a reversal in that fertility rate decline and will be like a halcyon era for parenthood. That's a possibility. OK, so it's not a firm prediction that this will just happen. But I've got I think I don't know. I think there's still this doomer streak, even in very smart circles that like, you know, it'll go the other way, which like to be kind of dystopian, it'll be like, actually, humans won't have sex at all. I'm gonna be sex robots. I'm like, like people have like all these kind of like wild, like disparate beliefs about how this could go.

51:30But I kind of believe when when people talk about what is the future of work, etc. et cetera, people want purpose, right? Like we gravitate towards wanting to do something meaningful. Well, I've got a little bit of a micro newsflash, which is one of the most meaningful things that humans have gravitated towards that gives a feeling of a life's purpose that has been a forever thing is having kids. And so it's possible that with less, with more question marks about getting meaningful feelings from work or what does AI do to various career paths, I think parenthood may be even more attractive, not less.

52:07And then if we are, if you believe some of the more positive aspects of where AI could leave us in terms of removing drudgery and admin from our lives and creating some more abundance in various ways, then that opens up more opportunities for healthy parenthood and spending time with kids. So I'm like, I've got this weird hypothesis. And again, I've yet to find someone who will like really agree, like everyone's like, that's never are going to happen. I think I'm in broad agreement with you on this. I've always said the worst thing about parenthood, though, I think you agree with this. The worst thing about parenthood is the number of forms you have to fill out.

52:43It's like every additional child, for some reason, exponential growth in the forms. It's like, why are there so many freaking forms from like health care forms to school forms? Right. And if you could just get rid of the forms. And it starts with the hospital. It starts within moments of like birthing the child. They're like, here's the diaper, like, you know, checklist thing. Here's a clipboard for you to note down. It's kind of wild. It starts like literally immediately. So I agree. I'm clearly very optimistic, but I think that a lot of the wilder things I'm doing could be played with by anyone now or very soon.

53:18It's just all these things are kind of going to get easier and easier. And so what does that mean? The modern parent's life can be, yeah, quote unquote, less drudgery. and that might make you feel happier about having that extra kid, you know? Thanks for listening to this episode of the A16Z podcast. If you liked this episode, be sure to like, comment, subscribe, leave us a rating or review and share it with your friends and family. For more episodes, go to YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Follow us on X at A16Z and subscribe to our Substack at a16z.substack.com. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you in the next episode.

54:00As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only. Should not be taken as legal business, tax or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. Please note that A16Z and its affiliates may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investments, please see a16z.com forward slash disclosures. Thank you.