
At a lobster-themed event for AI enthusiasts, exuberance with a side of cocktail sauce
NBC News
NEW YORK — As a man wearing a neon-blue jellyfish hat fought off draping tentacles to scroll through his phone and find the latest message from his personal AI assistant, three people wearing Pegasus wings flitted through a sweaty Manhattan apartment-turned-ballroom trying to recruit users for their latest AI solution.“It’s getting hot, and the lobster is getting warm,” said Michael Galpert, one of the hosts of the event, encouraging the thousand-plus crowd to settle down so the evening’s presentations could begin.
NEW YORK — As a man wearing a neon-blue jellyfish hat fought off draping tentacles to scroll through his phone and find the latest message from his personal AI assistant, three people wearing Pegasus wings flitted through a sweaty Manhattan apartment-turned-ballroom trying to recruit users for their latest AI solution.
“It’s getting hot, and the lobster is getting warm,” said Michael Galpert, one of the hosts of the event, encouraging the thousand-plus crowd to settle down so the evening’s presentations could begin. “Welcome to ClawCon.”
The event, ClawCon NYC, held Wednesday night, brought together an eclectic crowd that ranged from college students and working moms to hedge fund technology teams. They had gathered for a seafood spread of free lobster tails and to learn more about one of the AI ecosystem’s latest innovations: OpenClaw.
At its simplest, OpenClaw is a sort of free software package that allows humans to create “agents” — AI systems that can perform autonomous tasks with limited human oversight. The project, launched in November by software engineer Peter Steinberger, was originally named “Clawd” in homage to Anthropic’s powerful Claude AI system.
After Anthropic strongly suggested that Steinberger change its name to avoid any legal issues, the project kept its lobster-themed heritage and eventually landed on the OpenClaw moniker. The software has soared in popularity over the past few months, and several ClawCon attendees who started using it in January referred to themselves as “veterans.”

NEW YORK — As a man wearing a neon-blue jellyfish hat fought off draping tentacles to scroll through his phone and find the latest message from his personal AI assistant, three people wearing Pegasus wings flitted through a sweaty Manhattan apartment-turned-ballroom trying to recruit users for their latest AI solution.“It’s getting hot, and the lobster is getting warm,” said Michael Galpert, one of the hosts of the event, encouraging the thousand-plus crowd to settle down so the evening’s presentations could begin.

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