Status: 08/20/2021 12:41 p.m.
Apparently, Tesla boss Elon Musk is not satisfied with building electric cars and rockets: at Tesla “AI Day” he presented a new project: a humanoid robot called “Tesla Bot”.
Tesla boss Elon Musk has announced the production of the prototype of a humanoid robot called “Tesla Bot” with the name “Optimus” for the coming year. The human-like robot with a size of more than 170 cm should be able to take on dangerous, repetitive or boring tasks in the future and relieve people in this way.
For presentation purposes – flanking the announcement on “AI Day”, the day of “Artificial Intelligence” (KI) of the car manufacturer Tesla – there was an actor in a robot costume.
Universal Basic Income?
As the US broadcaster “CNBC” reports, Musk does not intend to use the planned robot in his factories at first. The entrepreneur is thinking of activities as varied as buying groceries or attaching screws to cars with a wrench the “Tesla Bot” could be used. The entrepreneur said that the robot should not be too expensive, friendly and able to move through a world designed for humans.
Musk underlined how profound the impact of using this robot could be on the economy, especially on the labor market. It could help, for example, to further reduce labor costs. In this context, Musk spoke out in favor of a universal basic income, according to the US trade magazine “Tech Crunch”.
Competition for engineers
However, there are doubts among observers as to how realistic this new vision from the Tesla boss is. After all, Musk has failed to live up to previous high-profile announcements. At an “Autonomy Day” in April 2019, for example, he announced that Tesla would have more than a million self-driving vehicles by mid-2020 that drivers could fall asleep on while traveling. This goal was not achieved.
According to experts, the “AI Day” is primarily intended to give Tesla an edge in the competition for top engineers. Tesla is competing with Google in particular for engineers who are familiar with AI, says Ross Gerber, head of the Gerber Kawasaki investment fund: “‘AI Day’ is actually a recruiting day for Tesla.” Gene Munster from Loup Ventures also spoke of a “geek fest”, a festival for technology freaks.
Marketing à la Musk?
Raj Rajkumar, Professor of Electronics and Information Technology at Carnegie Mellon University, asks himself whether Musk just wanted to start the hype machine with his Tesla Bot: He could say with certainty that it will take significantly longer than ten years until a humanoid robot from some company on the planet goes into business and groceries for you, according to the expert.