Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced his company is developing a humanoid robot, releasing a prototype “sometime next year” with the intended goal of the 56kg machine that isn’t “super expensive”.
Musk described the Tesla Bot, standing at about 5’8″ tall, approximately 125lb, is “intended to be friendly”. Having repeatedly confessed his fears of artificial intelligence in the past, the company is constructing it at a “mechanical level”, allowing anyone to “run away from it and most likely overpower it.”
Given the codename “Optimus” inside the company, the robots will be programmed to perform “tasks that are unsafe, repetitive or boring,” according to the company’s website. “I think essentially in the future, physical work will be a choice, if you want to do it you can,” Musk said.
The company revealed that “Tesla Bot” will bear a face superimposed by a screen that projects “useful information”, and be able to carry 45 pounds while moving at a speed of up to 5 miles per hour.
The humanoid robot will be built with Tesla’s automated machines and computer chip, augmented with hardwares and software parts used by the company’s Autopilot driver assistance software.
Human-like robots have long piqued people’s interest but building one capable of fulfilling human tasks has shown to be extremely challenging. Artificial intelligence has progressed immensely, yet it still lags far behind even a toddler’s abilities. Robotics applications have previously been limited to simple activities in basic environments, such as moving products in a factory or vacuuming a home autonomously.
Tesla is no stranger to ostentatious ideas that never came to fruition, such as a solar-powered Supercharger network, battery swapping, or robotic snake-style chargers, so walking among working Tesla Bots on a day to day basis is still far-fetched. However, Musk’s net valuation at over $180 billion means that any conceptual ideas he’s committed have a robust financial repository.
With billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos entering the rocket-space arena, it is pertinent to address the bonafide transformational influence of unelected billionaires over our communities and lives.
The addition of Tesla Bots paints a clear picture of billionaires cruising their way without much accountability, that the ramifications of these disruptive projects are seemingly an afterthought without a solid safety-net for the rest of us to fall back on.
With jobs like grocery collection expected to replace generations of human-skills, Musk proposed a universal basic income to circumvent the danger that technology poses in displacing job roles, handing responsibility over to governments instead.
The impact the “Tesla Bot” was marketed as a way to compensate for labour shortages, will be another turning point for society that is likely to be felt by millions of people and for much longer than the implications of the current pandemic.
Ironically enough, it is also a commercial appeal to its potential employer market. Labor shortages means bargaining power is relinquished over to workers who demand fair pay and better working conditions, or to leave their current positions that offer better wages.
Necessary democratic regulation must be fortified to demarcate the spheres between entrepreneurship and incomplete self-serving blueprints that potentially affect the lives of many.
