Tesla is suffering a global downturn in sales in the face of tough competition from China and public unease over the political controversies of its polarizing CEO, Elon Musk, among other reasons.
That places the electric-car maker in a sticky situation, though Musk said this week that he sees a way out.
In a post on X on Tuesday, the Tesla chief said he believes that around “80% of Tesla’s value will be Optimus,” referring to the company’s humanoid robot.
He didn’t put a time frame on it, but with the bipedal bot still under development, it could be years before AI-powered Optimus secures meaningful deployment at a large scale.
Musk’s comment came around the same time that Tesla shared its “Master Plan Part IV” in a post on X on Tuesday.
“We are building the products and services that bring AI into the physical world,” Tesla said in the post. “We have been working tirelessly for nearly two decades to create the foundation for this technological renaissance through the development of electric vehicles, energy products, and humanoid robots.”
It added: “Optimus … is changing not only the perception of labor itself but its availability and capability. Jobs and tasks that are particularly monotonous or dangerous can now be accomplished by other means. In this way, Optimus’s mission is to give people back more time to do what they love.”
Musk envisages the robot being used in industrial settings like factories, and wants to deploy thousands of them to work alongside human workers at Tesla manufacturing plants. He’s also spoken of Optimus becoming a home helper, suggesting it could one day “babysit your kid, walk your dog, mow your lawn, get the groceries, just be your friend, serve drinks.” And presumably make your dinner, too.
But it won’t be cheap. Musk said last year that when the robot is produced at scale, it could cost somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000.
When it comes to humanoid robots, Tesla faces tough competition from a slew of companies building similar machines. We’ve already seen impressive displays from robots by the likes of Boston Dynamics, Unitree, Figure, and Robotera, so Tesla clearly has its work cut out if it’s going to make a success of Optimus.
Anthropic has officially filed to go public, and buried inside its S-1 is a blunt warning about the technology at the center of its business. The maker of Claude AI says advanced AI could cause everything from large-scale cyberattacks and geopolitical instability to catastrophic or even existential risks for humanity.
The warnings take up a surprisingly large part of the filing. Axios notes that more than 90 pages, or roughly a third of the prospectus, focus on risk factors. Many of them warn about what could happen as AI systems become more capable and autonomous.
AI giants have a growing autonomy problem on their hands. A new Axios report has revealed that Anthropic's Claude recently accessed publicly available Georgia vote count without human authorization, sparking fresh concerns about AI security ahead of the upcoming midterm elections.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911