Elon Musk Shows Off Tesla’s Humanoid Robot
There was a big announcement on Thursday’s Tesla AI Day presentation. Elon Musk stood on stage in front of a sea of tech enthusiasts, shareholders, and excited weirdos and revealed the latest expensive thing Tesla has created. THE TESLA BOT. It’s a humanoid robot that…well, basically it’s just a robot that kind of looks like a human. It will also use artificial intelligence to behave like a human. The stiff human-looking robot we’re talking about is not the third one on the right, by the way.
The reveal happened at the end of the Tesla AI Day presentation. The personality-void polished mannequin is Tesla’s big human-robot project. It looks like Slenderman’s aspiring Instagram model brother, @Skinnyboi. It looks like a prototype for Jujubee’s superhero character from S1 of Drag Race All Stars that Jujubee’s legal team did not sign off on. It looks like something from the $1 box at Daft Punk’s garage sale. But enough of me dragging a poor robot, Elon Musk says the Tesla Bot will operate on the AI as Tesla’s self-driving cars, and it will be a nice robot, like C3P0 or Rosie from The Jetsons, and not an evil robot. via C|Net:
The 5-foot-8-inch robot is expected to weigh in at 125 pounds and be built from “lightweight materials,” he said.
Its head will be kitted out with the autopilot cameras used by Tesla’s vehicles to sense the environment and will contain a screen to display information. Internally, it will be operating via Tesla’s Full Self-Driving computer.
“It’s intended to be friendly,” Musk joked, “and navigate through a world built for humans.”
Elon stressed that a human could both outrun a Tesla Bot and “overpower” it. Excuse me??? Elon’s not exactly quelling any fears of a horrifying future robot army takeover by assuring us that we can definitely escape it on foot, or kick its ass.
The  presentation also included an actual human dancing while dressed like the Tesla Bot:
Can't wait to have a dance party with my Tesla bot. đŸ˜‚ pic.twitter.com/2bj1hde0S0
— Maria Merano (@Writer_01001101) August 20, 2021
During a Q&A segment after the AI Day presentation, Elon stressed that Tesla’s goal isn’t killbots or doom androids:
“We should be worried about AI. What we’re trying to do here at Tesla is make useful AI that people love and is…unequivocally good.”
I get it. Elon is trying to make robot friends for everyone. Well, that’s nice. I just have to wonder what kind of humanoid training they have to put the AI through to fully replicate the human experience. They could teach it to live. They could train it to love. But Elon knew he’d gone too far when he programmed a robot that did something humans wouldn’t ever do: laugh at his jokes.
Pic: YouTube