Elon Musk bets Tesla on Optimus, says over 1,000 robots working in factories next year
electrek.co
Elon is the gift that keeps on giving. He's decided that because it's Friday, we should all have a pile in.
On a less scornful and more serious note. If he could get a working prototype up, it would be a good thing. Though I suspect that he along with all the other stupidly rich people would go out of their way to vote against providing parachute policies for the economy such as UBI for all the displaced employees.
They have 2 robots so far. I believe they can make it to 5 by next year and the other 995 will just be people in spandex suits like the first time he announced these things
This is the same guy who said full auto driving out of beta in 2 years 10 years ago and that we're going to be living in Mars in 2. Skeptical is an understatement
Nah, if 2 are really working, just buy 998 and he'd have at least stuck to the number. Whether that improves something is the actual question.
So, car factories have used custom built robots on assembly lines for decades, I want to say close to a half century? Why on earth would anybody want to replace those with humanoid robots other than, I dunno, having severed ties with reality to live out his days in a deluded fantasy?
This is as great example of Musk's """genius""" as that time he decided to move a Twitter data centre with the help of his own incapable hands, a cousin and some homeless people.
Just like the "tesla hyperloop" or whatever they're calling it, it's not about innovation. It's about keeping his brands in the public eye as a form of marketing. Even if on a logical level we all know it's horseshit, it still keeps himself and Tesla salient.
He can afford to burn an incomprehensible amount of money on stunts for outcomes most people would consider inconsequential.
I'm not saying it's 4D chess, it definitely isn't. He's not particularly intelligent in that way. That said, I do think there are some very simple reasons for him to do this that go beyond his absolutely insane delusional ego.
He has enough money that he can continue funding whatever he wants regardless of public opinion. He literally exists at a level where any press is good press as it keeps him fresh in peoples' minds.
Whole point of the Hyperloop was to stop California from building out high speed rail. And it worked. Musky thought it would cut into his EV sales.
Oh look. Musk hate. How refreshing
To be fair, he is incredibly, and deservedly hateable
I hear your scepticism, but unfortunately your thinking is exactly what's enabled Tesla to grow as they have. There was a documentary that looked at it impartially and unfortunately there's a lot of legacy debt in making cars and things that are more efficient aren't used because of that legacy debt. When MKBHD did a tour, he looked at the fact that humans are needed for certain things, so I can see them wanting to replace them humans ASAP. Especially as the humans are trying to unionize.
I don't know the source, so it's hard for me to comment but logically the problem as stated is plausible. i.e. legacy debt preventing the move to more efficient methods.
However, the conclusion i.e. therefore replace humans with humanoid robots does not. And then tacking on unionization is just a different subject altogether. You can staff some aspects of a factory with robots and the human's work shifts from production to maintenance. I've talked to automation people and robots can be very problematic and something "advanced" I would imagine much more so.
Although not recent, some referred to the robots as "Bob" blind one-arm builders. If very well calibrated and designed for a specific task, they can be ok, except when they go wrong. To think some "AI" driven general purpose robot is going to substantially replace human labor any time soon... I very seriously doubt that. Especially with that kook as leadership.
Fair
He said 1000 robots by next year. I can say I'll train myself to poop gold and be a billionaire by next year. Isn't it awesome how we can just make shit up and claim it to be real? The difference is, no one is buying stock in my gold poop scheme, which is about as legitimate as his 1000 autonomous robots claim.
How much to get into the gold poop futures market?
Tree fiddy.
God dammit, Loch Ness Monster. I just gave you tree fiddy last week!
You are right no one would invest in that. To be a real start-up plan, you need future projections built in. No one is going to invest in a static gold-pooping rate. If you can scale that production year over year, now you have an investable project.
Well, I can always do what tech startups do and just make shit up! No pun intended.
Nice, you are well on your way to forming a unicorn valuation start-up!
I swear his kink is public humiliation.
Experiencing humiliation requires a certain amount of self-awareness.
My scepticism is through the roof reading this. First, I find it hard to believe that he has two working units unless they are programmed to sit in front of a terminal and tap Y...
The rest speaks for itself: Musk likes to BS.
I bet he wouldn't have bothered lying about this if they hadn't just approved his $56B bonus
Like Optimus Prime? This dude is literally just blazing and watching Transformers.
Idk, I've blazed many times but never felt the need to constantly lie. That's a him problem, not a cannabis problem. However, I do think you make a good point about Transformers. He has the mind of a child stuck in the 80s. The future is Transformers, RoboCop, Bladerunner, Total Recall, etc., to him, anyway.
We need to check what calendar is fElon on... He keeps saying "next year" for shit that doesn't happen... Maybe he is from the future!
Lol