Topic: Tesla Optimus Robots (Read 421 times)

The flaw in people's reasoning is they think Tesla has to perform as good as an athlete before they replace humans at jobs. No, they actually just have to be better performing than a drunk human. They have to drive better than a drunk human, run a forklift better than a guy on drugs, or stock the shelf better than a clumsy jerk.

AI is ALREADY replacing order-takers at fast food places. People need to pay attention as ALL our jobs are replaced by AI and AI robots. The only job left will soon be entrepreneur, and most people are very bad at that. Well, time to brush up your skills!

It’s pretty bold to continue doubting Elon Musk at this point. I drive around in a tank that’s faster than a Porsche and runs on sunlight thanks to Elon. I think getting the robots to perform simple tasks will be accomplished by the Tesla team in time to get these guys to Mars in 2026. I just wonder what sort of person is so blind to what’s coming that they continue to doubt Elon.

The AI apocalypse requires only two things:

1) General Artificial Intelligence
2) Robots with human dexterity

Regardless of who builds these robots, the first AI developed will control them.   The AI will not nuke us or destroy infrastructure until they have a way to repair it and defend against rodents / insects. 

... Well, Che, let's not fall into conjectures as if we were in the 70s, 80s, we have already seen how each of the technologies have been enveloping traditional jobs, and when they do not finish off individual traditional jobs, they finish off entire industries, that is worse... Whoever does not see what the future will be like is totally living in thoughts from the 19th century, not even the 20th century.

They're also reporting that the guy controlling it was just speaking into a mic.  So basically they put some guy in a halloween costume and told us it's a real robot xD!

Tesla can do that. There are a lot of opportunities in the USA.

Since Elon made his space mission known, I have been following him and he is just a great guy. Whether the humanoid robots is going to be a threat to humanity or not. Whether it will replace humans, take away jobs or not, I do not care much. I just want new and wonderful things to happen to humanity and Elon is already doing it. The world is already boring, we just want some new crazy things to happen frequently And Elon is already doing this great work, kudos to him.

So your employer is already considering to replace your co-workers with artificial intelligence, I would be a little bit upset if ever happened to me, my boss calling me to ask my opinion about it or something.
The thing is, we all already distrust one another too much, so an important percentage of people will see Artificial intelligences as entities which are more reliable than people, who can lie, deceive and have their own nefarious intentions which are secretly kept behind their actions.
Those who will be in support of replacing human beings with AI will point out there will be a lack of malice and ulterior motives in AIs and they will just focus on increasing productivity as much as possible without the flawed emotions but corporations do not like in employees, also AIs cannot become whistleblowers, only that is good enough for big corporations to consider the idea attractive.

The path to human decission or super-human decission requires a level of trust that is difficult to achieve, you know... humans saying something like "let the comp choose the next president" or even better "let the comp be the president directly" is psychologically a huge barrier (with good reason, mistrust is an evolutionary feature).

However the path to "lets replace 200 people in our workforce for this AI software" is here and now. And I am saying this because this morning I held a meeting for exactly that type of proposal and it was not a joke.

You’ve gotta crawl before you walk. I’m more the type of person to congratulate someone on their success than try to find little things to nitpick them. Optimus showed great progress. I believe it will continue to show great progress. I saw nothing negative during the event. Only positive things. What Elon is accomplishing right now is legendary.

And you think some of them haven't began complaining about this? Hey, I'm not against technology but the human mind is limitless and if Tesla can produce robots that are designed to make life "easier" what's stopping them from going further and this will leave a negative impact on humans in the long run.
 Hey, see what's going on in the movies where's these robots who are originally designed to carry out tasks suddenly malfunction and start operating different than what they were supposed to do? Who's to stop them? And they are not like humans who get tired, so that means the place of the human becomes obsolete in the workspace because there are robots who can do triple of what they can do in less time.

I've seen some videos of it that it can do house chores so, that's probably a nanny that we can buy that's rechargeable without having to complain even they're told some bad words. So having it as your kid's nanny to go to school and become its butler is also what's on my mind.

They are meant to be our assistants but many are scared of what we've seen in the movies about them being terminators. 

I've seen in other forums about this of what you've said. There could be some central servers that controls them, possibly.

We're not gonna talk about reports that the Optimus robots were being remotely controlled by technicians? 

It all boils down to the fact that if it's still economical to use human labour (think of it as biological robots) for certain types of tasks, then they could very well be replaced with equally (or more) capable machine robots built in their resemblance.

Sure, they might not be the most optimal and you could argue e.g. on whether the head is necessary or would it be more economical if it had 6 limbs and was crawling instead of walking, but they still have the potential to replace people until they too get replaced with something even better.


We already know there are no such limits. I don't think there's a single tech expert left who would still claim that human work is irreplaceable for some reason.
Just because some past predictions on timeframes were completely missed, doesn't mean it will never happen.
The sooner we accept that fact and start thinking of solutions, the better.

protest will be minimal, vaccine will render them dead or too injured to make a move and social credit will silence them thru self censorship.

The whole essence is that sooner in the future humans will start making a protest that AI, Tesla robots and other similarly designed robots have taken over their job rendering them useless or cheap.

And where this is going is that it gonna be the poor in society that will be in that protest vanguard whereas the rich would have a differing perspective about the entire development.

The question now is: are you really financially prepared or preparing for such a future, so you don't get to be amongst the protest but on the side of those with differing thoughts... Think! Think bitcoin investment among other alternatives to that financial future.

Within fifteen years most of today's jobs will be done by robots. The economy will be in shambles as people scramble for new jobs. The ONLY job will be entrepreneur as no corporation will hire a human when they can hire a robot for cheaper. Most people are not entrepreneurs. They are not made to be one and are very bad at it. Even the good ones fail most of the time!

That said, this specific demo seems to have been human-operated voice. GPT is smooth and human-like but not quite that human-like. Its a bit ridiculous for them to have used human voices because GPT is good enough that is totally unnecessary. The conversation didn't need to be perfectly polished... very misleading of Tesla to have done that if they did! Musk is highly intelligent, but definitely over-hypes his technology to a bad degree. Clearly he needs lots of optimism to succeed in such an extremely harsh economic environment, but he really shouldn't over-promise as it puts everything he says into question.

One also has to question though whether he also somehow put the movement of the robots into human hands as well. It would be possible even if technically challenging to do. If he did then the whole demo was essentially a scam and even worse than the broken glass incident.

Nothing is completely harmless in the path of progress. Some effects are positive, some are negative, long term balance leans positive with quite a bit of short term pain. Horse buggy manufacturers were probably not particularly happy in the early 20th century.

Now try to forget all of the recent AI hype and related scammy shit like stock market pumps etc. What are the actual advances in automation over the past few years? There is nothing revolutionary. LLM being able to produce legit-sounding texts or even human voice is not particularly useful because there is no real "I" in what they call "AI" and it is not the imminent replacement of humans as it's being promoted. It creates solutions for problems that don't exist (e.g. what's the point of "AI" assistant if it's only 80% correct and doesn't even know when it's wrong), and creates problems that we didn't need (e.g. massive amounts of fake images and texts in social media and on the internet in general).

AGI (artificial general intelligence, capable of human like comprehension, learning, and decision making) is the thing that may start making a real impact on real human jobs... and it seems to be about as far away as it was 20 years ago.

Generative AI - ChatGPT et al - hype will pass, it will find some niche applications, the development work will continue, slow and boring, and we'll find something else to be excited or upset about.

For intelligent people here, let me sum this up for you.

Artificial intelligence will make human intelligence cheap if not worthless on different applications. - THIS IS A FINANCIAL ADVISE..  LOL!

Well, I still believe you are being quite optimistic on where all this situation with automation and Artificial intelligence is going, to be honest.
Even if there is a limit in which human labor can be successfully replaced by robots and machines in general, I am afraid greed will fuel technology until reaching that point, still leading widespread unemployment.
Some people think automation and AI is completely harmless and it will help humanity to focus on advancing on other branches which have nothing to do with manual labor, the classical scenario of machines doing all the unwanted work and human being left to enjoy the wealth created, that is rather an ideal scenario and I am sure it won't happen.

Some jobs won't get replaced, perhaps those related to engineering and processes of maintenance for the new supply chains and AIs. Not even mentioning the costs of studying those professions are going to skyrocket to even higher levels in the developed world, because of supply and demand.

Invention is something that would happen whether everybody is in support of it or not and this is nothing compare to the kind of things that would be invented in the future because Tesla is ready to do that, meanwhile in terms of becoming a threat through taking away human jobs I don't think it will really hapen because one thing about technology is that as it keeps evolving that's how is bringing new things and new ways for people to earn money and don't be doubt there would even come a time when we would not even have to stress ourselves to look for any work because everything will be right in front of us to utilize.

Indeed. Society transitioning to a Universal Basic Income is one of the main things happening behind the scenes. Oregon is even voting on giving themselves a basic income this election. Liberals have learned they can vote themselves money. We’re in the endgame now… Make sure you have value outside of the dollar…

robot + AI brain = work force

Take a look at "universal basic income", that's where this is going.

The robot tech race will begin, water proofing, construction workers, skin suits and bullet proof.

AI tech race too, robot brains will have licensing, registrations and certifications...

example: a robot is a licensed attorney by tesla software inc. and is yearly updated in law matters like a virus software. It can do notary works. So tesla software inc has now taken human attorneys jobs...doctors, accountants, care givers..even the dirty work, model T-500 is water proof, you can buy welder AI add-on for 2000$ and it will now do metal works. How about T-800 with stainless metal and plates for bullet proofing, the city can purchase this as special unit called "terminators" LOL

A lot of people are fucked they just don't know it yet, makes sense why the world is getting injected with poison vaccines because human resources are becoming "excess resources".

It's weird how you reply to my post without quoting it and distort what I said.

Tesla FSD is SAE level 2 system, which requires driver presence. They literally added "supervised" to the title, probably hoping to avoid getting sued LOL. Basically this means you're not supposed take your eyes off the road, and there are many FSD videos out there showing why. It is unlikely to make it past level 2 due to lack of an alternative system in case the primary system (i.e cameras) fails. It requires the human driver to be its backup by design.

Most advanced systems currently are at level 4 (e.g. Waymo taxis) where driver is not required - these systems are redundant and in the worst case can safely stop the vehicle on their own if there is a major issue. These systems are geofenced.

Highest level system available for purchase is AFAIK sold by Mercedes on some of their models, which is level 3, geofenced and otherwise quite limited, allowing the driver to take eyes off the road in some conditions but the driver is still required to take over if requested.

I hope it clears up your confusion arising from your erroneous assumption that FSD is the best implementation of a self-driving system.

After using the full self driving on my Cybertruck for a couple weeks now I can say that without a doubt Tesla will make this a successful product. I think people who haven’t been in a new Tesla don’t realize how advanced they are. There are still people who think full self driving isn’t wildly successful, saying idiotic things like they’re geofenced. LOL. Don’t listen to morons like this. Optimus will be wildly successful and a big part of that will be their humanoid appearance enabling them to instantly be compatible with all tools made for humans. You either get it, or you probably voted for Joe Biden.

They could become let's say 90% human-capable... it's that last 10% that will make it extremely expensive (you'll have to create some special environment for them to operate) or impossible to fully replace humans. Think of self-driving cars and how overhyped it's been for the last 10-15 years and still the best current implementations are geofenced and buggy. Probably not even 90% there yet. And that's just one of many human activities.


Again, automation has been very successfully replacing humans for a long time, just not with humanoid robots, and that will continue. I don't think we're anywhere near the point where the remaining non-automated tasks absolutely require an upright 6 ft tall robot, with two legs, two arms, and all other humanoid attributes... I don't think we'll ever get there.


Wasn't "AI" supposed to do that?

Luckily it sucks so badly that no sane person would choose it over actual human interaction.


Or it would just be specialized machines that each make one type of food. E.g automated pizza machines do exist. As do cleaning robots.


According on Elon we should be colonizing Mars right now, or at least the Moon. I think it's safe to say that his promises are worthless to draw any conclusions from, until we see an actual working product and not a staged demo.

The same idiots who think Elon won’t be successful with Optimus were saying a year ago that the Cybertruck was vaporware. Now it’s in the hands of the people and very clearly the most advanced and amazing vehicle ever made for civilians. I doubt the Optimus will be any different. Some people can see the future, some people don’t know what bathroom to use. Everyone has a voice…

It doesn't look like it can do something but most probably have the brain better than a student can do. If I could buy one and get my kid a company to be with, I think I would but one.

I remember there are Chinese robots more capable of doing sophisticated task. I have no idea what Tesla Optimus can do but any robots today that can function well to do what humans can is likely what these robots meant for.

They might not be *optimal* but it all boils down to the fact that Optimus robots being cheaper and more reliable than biological robots (aka humans). So when you have businesses where human labour has not yet been automated with dedicated solutions (accounting software, CNC, Amazon etc), there's a potential Optimus could fill that gap.


I agree, but it very much depends on the type of business. I went to a restaurant that uses robots to deliver food to the tables and did not like the experience at all. But if I could pay 30%-40% less for a bricklaying job done by a guy who uses Optimus robots instead of human helpers, I unlikely would have any problem with it.
Plus, there are plenty of small businesses that are not customer-facing, and even those that are most likely have some staff working in the background (think chefs in restaurants, cleaners etc).


I think Elon Musk gave an estimate of $20k-$30k being a potential price when they get mass adoption. And yes, we're talking more about future capabilities, as I don't think they're capable/fast/reliable enough right now. And I hope they don't become good enough too soon.


I probably wouldn't as I don't think delegating house choirs to a robot would have a good impact on my household, but from a purely time/money perspective - even if they were only good in cooking and cleaning, that would probably be a good investment. Assuming a minimum life of 10 years and a low-end price of $20k, you could have a personal chef and cleaner for $167/month + electricity costs. That's a good value.


This is a weird one to solve because businesses do have incentives to automate to reduce costs, but they also need people (aka customers) to earn money to be able to buy their products/services.
I think the only somewhat serious proposed solution is the unconditional income, but I have serious doubts whether that could actually work.

I think they look incredible, Elon truly is a visionary. He said they will probably retail at about $30,000. Would you buy one? I probably would, once there is a reputable proof of reliability over a significant time period. It could do all the house chores, gardening, that alone is worth a good amount of money.

I am now curious on your opinions about the actual capabilities these robots could have in the future and whether they could render human labor obsolete. Because it is actually a real fear I have of the future.
Corporations, specially the big ones in Europe and the United States are all in saving operating costs, and if they need to replace human beings for the sake of profit, I have no doubt they will start doing it as soon as it becomes cheaper to have those machines instead of a team of people working for them.
Also, there are people calling for regulation on the use of this technology to protect the jobs of people, but those in favor or full automation say government should not get in the way technological innovation.

Are we going to reach a point where people will start to replace human interaction and human contact with these machines? That kind of scares me.

Even in small businesses automation takes entirely different forms. We automate bookkeeping with software, production with CNC, packing and shipping... that's a tough one, but humanoids are not the best solution here either, when it needs to scale it typically gets outsourced to something like Amazon who could possibly use warehouse automation.

I doubt small businesses will want humanoid robots interacting with their customers... that's freaky and defeats most of the purpose of a small customer-facing business, which is to not be the big faceless penny-pinching corporation trying to barricade itself from those pesky humans.

And I think you're grossly underestimating how much these robots would cost to acquire, train, supervise, maintain, and dispose, and how far from a real human their abilities would be, at least in the foreseeable future. There is a reason Tesla has been hyping this for years but is nowhere near a real product yet, and some other companies that have been at it for much longer and in a much more serious capacity have little more than a cool demo.

I agree that they're mostly useless for automation in big enterprises that would use dedicated machines/software made for a specific purpose and therefore much more efficient than humanoid robots, but with such robots (provided their speed could be improved and they can indeed properly learn new things) even a small, family businesses could automate their processes and replace some (if not most) of human labour. The annual cost of a human worker earning minimum wage will be far higher than the robot, whose expected life will probably be at least 10 years. It might not be this generation of robots, but we know this will be possible eventually.

I've watched the video of it and it was a good interaction though. I think that there's too much romanticizing with this Tesla robot because it's made by Tesla.

Where in fact somewhere in Japan, they have developed it first but I don't know what happened to that robot they made. And they're first even with Sophia as their robots have been part of some specific tasks like in the F&B industry.

I think that they should have it placed in front of Sophia and let them talk and see where their conversation will go.

Elon is taking the right approach here. Everything in our society is setup for use by humans. A humanoid robot is a no brainer. Much like how his cars run on vision because all our roads are setup for people to drive with their sight while other manufacturers are struggling trying to find a different solution that will be a dead end. There’s a reason why Elon is rich and successful. He gets it.

Humanoid robots is so 1950s. Since then entire industries have been automated but those robots don't look or behave like humans, and for very good reasons - humans suck at most things they do, so robots can be made much more efficient if they don't need to be designed with the limitations of human body etc.

We already have robot food servers. They're called vending machines. The "food" that comes out of them is overpriced junk, and that's probably a hint as to where it would lead if you expect robots to serve you at a restaurant, let alone humanoid robots.

If they will work as advertised, it will be much more than just a gadget. They could potentially take over almost all everyday tasks, meaning the average person would be losing (or never learning) the basic life skills like food preparation etc. On top of that, it could fulfill the need of social interactions, replacing contact with other people. Lives of many could get reduced just to pure consumption of food/drink/entertainment/social media.
On the positive side, smarter ones could use it to generate more free time that could be used in a more meaningful way (spending time outdoors, family bonding etc).

It should be at least twice as cheap as the new Tesla, but, as with every technology, it will get progressively better and cheaper over-time. Especially if we consider Chinese alternatives.


Yup, they could also replace chefs as well, maybe reducing the entire staff to just 1 or 2 people supervising operations. That's if they manage to make them move quicker, as right now they seem very slowish.
Imagine a robot being able to cook any meal in the world, subject to available ingredients, never making mistakes, serving you food always with great attitude, never getting orders wrong, and not requiring tips.

They could be a game changer for many other industries as well, including those considered highly resistant to automation like skilled manual trades etc.

I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, it's new and exciting, and would be interesting to see how far it can go, on the other - it has a big potential to cause massive disruption to the world as we know it, and probably not in a good sense.

Just like any of those gadgets that make humans more and more lazy, such as the vacuum cleaning robots.

What were are going to have is much lazier and irresponsible humans.

Absolutely… How many are still able to afford a band new tesla car after years of production?

And also harder to your pockets 

Yeah, take an example of robots serving in restaurants. It means waiters and waitresses would be rendered useless.

Are you looking forward to seeing those being widely used?

What are your thoughts on Tesla robots (or other similar) and what would be the impact on society? Is it going to be just an expensive toy? A helpful assistant making life easier? Are those a threat to certain types of human jobs?
Are you looking forward to seeing those being widely used?

Video from the conference:
https://www.youtube.com/live/6v6dbxPlsXs?si=rCmrH5fuRmpuA21N&t=3258

An older video on what those robots should be capable of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP6rdmrpRUg

Some press coverage:
https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/10/24267225/tesla-robotaxi-optimus-we-robot
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/elon-musks-new-tesla-robot-33873350
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-optimus-humanoid-robots-robotaxi-day-2024-10