Tesla is working on a humanoid robot
Steph Deschamps / August 20, 2021
Tesla boss Elon Musk on Thursday unveiled a proposed metal humanoid robot that will be able to perform repetitive tasks and will be built on the same technology as the company's semi-autonomous vehicles.
The whimsical entrepreneur has promised a first prototype of the Tesla Bot next year, which will have five fingers on its hands and an androgynous black-and-white silhouette. Tesla is certainly the most important robotics company in the world, because the cars are semi-conscious robots on wheels, with a dedicated on-board computer for autonomous driving, Elon Musk argued during an online event about his group's advances in artificial intelligence. It makes sense to give this a humanoid form, he added. The goal of the presentation, which focused on the development of autonomous driving technologies, was to attract new engineers. Tesla is under investigation for its Autopilot and Full Self driving (FSD) driving assistance technologies. They are accused of making motorists falsely believe that vehicles can drive themselves. But this topic was not discussed during the two and a half hours of conference and questions from the audience broadcast live online.
The Tesla Bot will be friendly and you will be able to escape it by running faster than it a priori, Elon Musk joked. He also mentioned profound implications for the economy, since the economy is based on work. He thus envisions a world where physical effort will no longer be mandatory, but a choice.
The second richest man in the world according to Forbes, Elon Musk has created other start-ups: SpaceX, which became the first private rocket launch company in the world, and Neuralink, which specializes in brain implants. He believes in the risk of artificial intelligence competing with human civilization and hopes, through Neuralink, to achieve a symbiosis between humans and these technologies.