Is Elon Musk pivoting and building autobots?  Well, not quite, but he did announce at Tesla’s AI Day event that the company is now building a humanoid robot (cue loud clapping and cheering from the audience).  Elon said during the event that the robot is meant to “eliminate dangerous, repetitive boring tasks” and will respond to voice commands. 

Applying self-driving car tech to robots.  Elon spoke throughout the AI Day event, which is designed to attract engineering and research talent to the company, and explained that a lot of the technology in Tesla’s self-driving cars is applicable to creating humanoid robots.

“Tesla is arguably the world’s biggest robotics company because our cars are like semi-sentient robots on wheels,” he said. “It kind of makes sense to put that onto a humanoid form. We’re also quite good at sensors and batteries and actuators.”

‘Run away from it.’  Elon is a vocal proponent of the idea that AI is inherently dangerous and has also called it one of the biggest threats facing humanity.  So, it makes sense when he told the audience that on a physical level, Tesla’s robot has been intentionally built “so you can run away from it.”  The robot’s top speed is 5 mph with a height of 5’8 and weight of 125 lbs.

Human dancer inside the robot.  Ever the showman, the demo of the robot at the event actually had a real live dancer in the ‘robot suit’ to simulate what the real robot will be like – a human imitating a robot imitating a human.  Hmm.  And Elon proudly proclaimed that the robot will make physical work a choice in the future with obvious tectonic effects on the economy, including the need for some form of universal basic income.

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