In the span of a month, an artificial intelligence assistant called OpenClaw has come to embody both China’s excitement and its anxiety about what A.I. can do.

短短一个月内，一款名为OpenClaw的人工智能助手既体现出中国社会对人工智能潜力的兴奋，也折射出人们对它的焦虑。

Long lines stretched across Shenzhen, China’s technology hub, as people sought help from engineers to install OpenClaw. Some local governments started offering subsidies, free computing and discounted office rent to companies that use OpenClaw to build new services. Share prices of Chinese tech companies surged as industry leaders and start-ups scrambled to offer the tool on their platforms.

在中国科技中心深圳，人们排起长队，请工程师帮忙安装OpenClaw。部分地方政府开始为使用OpenClaw开发新服务的企业提供补贴、免费算力与优惠的办公室租金。随着行业巨头与初创企业争相在平台上推出这款工具，中国科技公司股价大幅上涨。

Then, almost as quickly, the tide turned. The Chinese government warned that OpenClaw carried serious security risks. Seeking to capitalize on the software’s success, Chinese tech companies rushed to launch copycat versions of the tool.

然而，风向几乎同样迅速地发生了逆转。中国政府警告称，OpenClaw存在严重安全风险。而希望借这款软件走红获利的中国科技公司纷纷推出模仿版本。

OpenClaw’s turbulent rise — and broader interest in tools like it, known as A.I. agents — underscores how the rush into artificial intelligence is reshaping China’s tech industry. Beijing has spent billions trying to turn the country into an A.I. superpower and has identified the technology as a critical driver of economic growth.

OpenClaw跌宕起伏的崛起过程，以及市场对这类被称为AI智能体工具的广泛热情，凸显出人工智能热潮正在如何重塑中国科技行业。中国政府已投入数千亿资金，力争将本国打造为人工智能强国，并将这项技术列为经济增长的关键引擎。

OpenClaw is a freely shared tool that functions as a virtual assistant, helping users conduct research, send texts or emails, and manage their calendars. Installed directly on a user’s computer, the A.I. agent can carry out tasks on its own, such as reading and responding to messages on apps like WhatsApp or iMessage, after an initial prompt by the user. Unlike most chatbots that rely on a single company’s A.I. model, OpenClaw can run on a variety of models.

OpenClaw是一款免费开源工具，功能类似虚拟助手，可帮助用户进行信息检索、发送短信或电子邮件，管理日程。这款AI智能体直接安装在用户电脑上，在用户初步指令后，可自主执行任务，比如读取并回复WhatsApp、iMessage等应用中的消息。与大多数依赖单一公司人工智能模型的聊天机器人不同，OpenClaw可在多种模型上运行。

OpenClaw, which was released four months ago, has already vaulted into this month’s top 10 most popular projects on GitHub, an online global community for coders. It has spurred excitement about the potential of agents to use artificial intelligence to help people become more efficient in their everyday lives.

四个月前发布的OpenClaw已跻身全球开发者在线社区GitHub本月最受欢迎十大项目。它让人们对智能体利用人工智能提升日常生活效率的潜力充满期待。

This month, Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, the American chip-making giant, added to the hype, telling an investor conference that OpenClaw was “probably the single most important release of software, you know, probably ever.”

本月，美国芯片巨头英伟达首席执行官黄仁勋更是为这股热潮推波助澜，他在一场投资者大会上称，OpenClaw“或许堪称有史以来最重要的软件发布”。

Tech companies are vying to capitalize on the excitement by launching their own agent and assistant tools. Nvidia said it planned to launch an A.I. agent platform called NemoClaw. Peter Steinberger, the engineer who developed OpenClaw, said last month that he was joining OpenAI to work on agents.

科技公司争相借势推出自家智能体与助手工具。英伟达宣布计划推出名为NemoClaw的AI智能体平台。开发出OpenClaw的工程师彼得·斯坦伯格上月表示，他已加入OpenAI，专注智能体研发。

The Chinese tech industry has also jumped on the bandwagon. Alibaba and Tencent, two of China’s biggest technology companies, said they were developing their own alternative A.I. agents.

中国科技行业也迅速跟风。中国两大科技巨头阿里巴巴与腾讯均表示，正在开发自家的AI智能体替代产品。

稀宇是一家于今年1月在香港上市的初创公司，是投资者预期将受益于OpenClaw等工具更广泛应用的企业之一。

Companies that build A.I. models and the hardware that powers them stand to gain financially from widespread use of A.I. agents, which can run continuously on a user’s device and frequently communicate with other models that charge based on usage.

打造人工智能模型及支撑其运行硬件的公司有望从AI智能体的广泛应用中获得经济收益——这类工具可在用户设备上持续运行，并频繁与其他按使用量计费的模型进行交互。

Shares of Chinese tech companies offering OpenClaw-like products have risen on investor optimism about A.I. agents, including Minimax and Zhipu, two start-ups that went public in Hong Kong this year and have released tools called MaxClaw and AutoClaw.

因投资者对AI智能体持乐观预期，推出类OpenClaw产品的中国科技公司股价上涨，其中包括今年在香港上市的两家初创公司稀宇和智谱，它们分别发布了名为MaxClaw与AutoClaw的工具。

In China, the phrase “raising a lobster,” a reference to OpenClaw’s logo, has spread online. While the government has raised concerns, the technology has been greeted by the public with more optimism than anxiety.

在中国，源自OpenClaw标志的“养龙虾”一词在网络上流传。尽管政府表达了担忧，但公众对这项技术的态度更多是乐观，而非焦虑。

“Most people view technology as a convenience, so when something new comes out, they are more willing to try it,” said Wendy Chang, a senior analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, a think tank.

德国墨卡托中国研究所高级分析师张文怡表示：“大多数人将技术视为一种便利，所以新事物出现时，他们更愿意尝试。”

But the same trait that makes OpenClaw useful, its versatility, also creates significant security risks.

然而，让OpenClaw如此实用的多功能特性会带来重大安全风险。

In recent weeks, Chinese regulators have repeatedly warned about security vulnerabilities linked to OpenClaw, including potential leaks of personal information and errors in financial transactions.

近几周，中国监管部门多次就OpenClaw相关安全漏洞发出警告，包括可能泄露个人信息及金融交易出错。

One person in China left OpenClaw running with access to his credit card, only to find the agent had run up the card to its limit, according to Chinese media reports.

据中国媒体报道，国内有用户在允许OpenClaw连接信用卡后任其运行，结果发现该智能体把信用卡额度刷爆。

OpenClaw是一款免费共享的工具，作为虚拟助手，它可以帮助用户进行研究、发送短信或电子邮件，并管理日程。

Multiple databases that track potential security breaches associated with the tool have sprung up online.

多个追踪该工具相关安全漏洞的数据库已在网上出现。

For some Chinese entrepreneurs, the idea that an A.I. system could be directed to act on its own has spawned a new vision of the internet where A.I. agents — and not human users — perform tasks such as buying things, sending messages and connecting on social networks.

对一些中国创业者而言，人工智能系统能够自主执行指令的特性催生了一种全新的互联网愿景：未来不是由人类用户，而是由人工智能体完成购物、发送消息、社交网络互动等任务。

Felix Tao, a former Facebook and Alibaba employee and co-founder of Mindverse, a start-up in Hangzhou, launched a software-building competition last month for engineers to develop applications related to A.I. agents. Hundreds of developers signed up and created more than 150 apps, Mr. Tao said. This month, he plans to co-host another event with Zhihu, a Chinese chat forum similar to Quora.

曾任职于Facebook和阿里巴巴的陶芳波是杭州初创公司心识宇宙联合创始人。他上月发起了一场软件开发竞赛，鼓励工程师开发与AI智能体相关的应用。陶芳波表示，数百名开发者报名参赛，打造了超过150款应用。本月，他计划与类似Quora的中文问答社区知乎联合主办另一场活动。

Mr. Tao said his company had been building a product called Second Me that would use A.I. to help people manage their lives. It can send daily emails to colleagues, for example, or regular text messages to check in with relatives.

陶芳波称，其公司正在开发一款名为Second Me的产品，利用人工智能帮助人们管理生活。例如，它可以给同事发送每日邮件，或定期发短信问候亲人。

Part of the reason people have been able to build with OpenClaw so quickly is that it is open source and freely available online. Chinese developers have embraced open-source A.I. tools, whose code is publicly available, enabling anyone to examine, modify or build new programs from it.

人们能够如此快速地基于OpenClaw开发应用，部分原因在于它是开源的，可在网上免费获取。中国开发者积极接受开源人工智能工具——其代码公开，任何人都可以查看、修改或基于其开发新程序。

In the year since the Chinese start-up DeepSeek stunned the tech world by announcing a new A.I. system that spends far less on computer chips than foreign rivals, Chinese companies have released a major share of the world’s top-performing open-source A.I. systems.

自中国初创公司深度求索宣布推出芯片成本远低于国外竞品的全新人工智能系统、震惊科技界以来，这一年间，中国企业发布的全球顶尖开源人工系统已占据相当大的比例。

While leading American A.I. companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic keep their systems closed, Chinese firms have increasingly released details of their technologies publicly.

OpenAI、Anthropic等美国头部人工智能公司对自身技术保密，与此同时，中国企业却越来越多地公开技术细节。

Chinese A.I. models offer a far cheaper option for engineers looking to experiment with tools like OpenClaw, helping explain why so many Chinese A.I. companies have released similar products in recent weeks, said Graham Webster, a professor at Stanford who focuses on geopolitics and technology.

斯坦福大学研究地缘政治与科技的教授格雷厄姆·韦伯斯特表示，对希望尝试OpenClaw这类工具的工程师来说，中国人工智能模型是成本低得多的选择，这也解释了为何近几周来有如此多的中国人工智能公司推出同类产品。

Chinese regulators will also have to weigh the benefits these tools will bring to the country’s A.I. industry, because of the privacy and security risks they pose, Mr. Webster said.

韦伯斯特称，考虑到隐私与安全风险，中国监管机构也必须权衡这些工具给本国人工智能产业带来的利弊。

“It could be a moment that starts to cause the Chinese government to think about the downsides of widely available open models,” Mr. Webster said.

“这可能会成为一个转折点，让中国政府开始思考广泛可用的开源模型的负面影响，”韦伯斯特说。