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Elon Musk has become one of the most influential businessmen on the face of the earth. He has revolutionized many technological fields, including transport and space travel. As of now, Musk earns most of his money through his Tesla motor vehicles. The idea of electric cars is not new; however, it was Musk who was able to perfect the idea and make the cars usable and reliable. Having said that, Elon Musk is continuously looking for ways to make his portfolio bigger, and in order to do that, he unveiled plans to build an AI robot.
For most people, this idea might sound like a novelty; however, the Tesla owner believes that these robots can be an even bigger business than Tesla cars. Optimus was previewed last year, and its performance became an instant hit on the internet. Netizens were quick to name the new robot the Tesla Bot as it would be essential to use the same artificial intelligence as the Tesla vehicles. However, no prototype has yet been made, so we can estimate that this robot isn’t going to hit the market anytime soon.
It was also said that the ideal height for the robot would be 5 feet and 8 inches, and it is going to have a screen to replace its face, which is also going to be one of the ways the user can communicate with the robot. According to other specs, the robot would have a speed of 5mph, and it would be able to live 150lbs. When asked about the motivation behind this project, Musk said that this robot could help solve the labor shortage. He said that the first application of the robot would be to move parts around the Tesla factory.
Musk believes that the Tesla AI can help build a proper AGI or artificial general intelligence. What this means is that the machine will be able to learn and understand tasks that humans currently perform quite seamlessly. Musk for a long time has been an advocate of using AI carefully because he believes that it can actually destroy the world. For that reason, he has also insisted that these robots need to be controlled from a decentralized perspective.
Many AI researchers and experts believe that even though Elon Musk has proved his brilliance, his robot idea is far to ambitious and maybe even unrealistic. This is because AGI is not an easy problem to solve and researchers have been trying it for a long time. People argue that Tesla vehicles are near AGI level, but that is not the case because it is just a very high functioning narrow intelligence.
Other tech giants like Facebook and Google have been trying to solve the AGI problem for many years and the idea that Elon Musk can come and solve it suddenly is farfetched. Having said that, Musk has achieved a lot in relatively less time and if he can build a robot like he explained, it would be a huge leap forward for technology.
