Lobster-Raising

饲养龙虾. Sìyǎng lóngxiā. “Raising lobsters.” That’s the phrase that took root in Chinese tech communities to describe the act of setting up and nurturing a personal OpenClaw AI agent. And for a few months, it was a national phenomenon — enthusiastic, grassroots, and spreading fast. Now, according to a sweeping NBC News feature published March 24, the craze is running into its first serious friction: government security concerns, corporate pullbacks, and a mainstream media that still can’t quite tell OpenClaw from OpenAI. ...

In China, the community idiom for setting up your own AI agent has a flavor entirely its own: 饲养龙虾 — “raising lobsters.” It’s grassroots, organic, and a little absurd in the best way. And it tells you something important about how a technology with deep American roots became a Chinese phenomenon within months. What Is “Raising Lobsters”? OpenClaw, the open-source AI agent platform created by Austrian programmer Peter Steinberger, has swept China with remarkable speed since its November release. More than 600 million people in China — over a third of the population — now use generative AI, according to a Chinese government-affiliated research group. OpenClaw usage in China is reportedly almost double that in the US, per American cybersecurity firm SecurityScorecard. ...