Evidence receipt / belief
Published · transcript-backedLex Fridman: belief
12 Feb 2026 Lex Fridman Podcast #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger
““Wow, this is the smartest thing of all time,” and then they start saying, “You could just watch the Reddit posts over time,” start saying that, “We believe the intelligence of this model has been gradually degrading.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Lex Fridman
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- belief
- Recorded
- 12 Feb 2026
- Publisher
- Lex Fridman Podcast
Transcript context
…I mean, they, they made it better. I think it’s … And, and they have plans to make it a lot better if the Cerebras stuff is true. But yeah, it’s a skill. It takes time. Even if you play … You have a regular guitar and you switch it to an E guitar, you’re not gonna play well right away. You have to, like, learn how it feels. The- there’s also this extra psychological effect that you’ve spoken about which is hilarious to watch. Which once people, uh … When the new model comes out, they try that model, they fall in love with it. “Wow, this is the smartest thing of all time,” and then they start saying, “You could just watch the Reddit posts over time,” start saying that, “We believe the intelligence of this model has been gradually degrading. ” It, it says something about human nature and just the way our minds work, when it’s probably most likely the case that the intelligence of the model is not degrading. It’s in fact you’re getting used to a good thing. And your project grows, and you’re adding slop, and you probably don’t spend enough time to think about refactors. And you’re making it harder and harder for the agent to work on your slop. And then, and then suddenly, “Oh, now it’s hard. Oh no, it’s not working as well anymore.” What’s the motivation for, like, one of those AI companies to actually make their model dumber? Like, at most, it will make it slower if, if the server load’s too high. But, like, quantizing the model so you have a worse experience, so you go to the competitor?…
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