Countless sci-fi films and video games such as Quantic Dream’s excellent Detroit: Beyond Human have teased an advanced future populated by humanoid robots that are capable of doing everything that their creators can, and more. It appears that Elon Musk is going to be the first visionary entrepreneur to make this into a reality.
Or, at least, that’s what the Tesla CEO claimed during an event livestreamed last night pertaining to the advancements that his company has made in the artificial intelligence field.
During the event, Musk revealed that Tesla would be building a new product called the “Tesla Bot.” As noted in one of the slides seen in the presentation, this will be a 125-pound humanoid robot leveraging cutting-edge AI technologies and autopilot hardware that can walk up to 5 MPH, carry 45 pounds, and deadlift 150 pounds. Its purpose is to eliminate dangerous, repetitive, and boring tasks.
Musk says that Tesla is aiming to release a prototype of the Tesla Bot as early as next year, but that hasn’t stopped skeptics, which include some of the world’s most renowned robotics experts, into thinking that this might just be another one of the CEO’s epic trolling attempts.
This is partially thanks to Musk’s weird decision of having a guy dressed in a Tesla Bot costume dancing to dubstep music at the beginning of the event, which seemed to downplay the legitimacy of the whole announcement. And while the presentation did gain some credibility thanks to a Q&A period with a team of engineers, it is hard to believe that Tesla could accomplish something so incredibly advanced in such a short period of time.
Lmao this is how he made his announcement? pic.twitter.com/6Ktybjyeav
— Ryan Mac🙃 (@RMac18) August 20, 2021
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Source: Tesla