SpaceX CEO Elon Musk claimed in a recent tweet that Tesla’s humanoid bot, code-named Optimus or Optimus Subprime, “might play a role” in bringing about artificial general intelligence (AGI) — a platform mimicking and even surpassing the functioning ability and intellectual intuition of a human being.
Tesla AI might play a role in AGI, given that it trains against the outside world, especially with the advent of Optimus
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 19, 2022
Musk, who describes Tesla’s self-driving EVs as “robots on wheels,” also added that he’s working to “decentralize” the control of Optimus to avoid a Terminator-esque scenario. He also said that he sees the project’s decentralization as a critical part of its development.
Speaking at Tesla’s AI Day event in August of last year, the Tesla exec noted that his company is probably the world’s biggest robotics firm because Tesla “cars are like semi-sentient robots on wheels.” According to Musk, it “kind of makes sense to put that onto a humanoid form.“
Tesla’s humanoid robot looks like something from a sci-fi movie. It will be tall, around 5.8 ft (176 cm), weigh 125 lbs (57 kg), and have the ability to carry a cargo of up to 44 lbs (20kg) with a walking speed of 5km per hour. Tesla aims to use a version of its Autopilot cameras, used in its electric vehicles for steering, accelerating and braking automatically, and a full self-driving computer to operate the bot, effectively using the SAE Level 2 semi-autonomous driving tech which is a form of advanced driver assistance system. Optimus will feature 40 electromechanical actuators and its face will feature a screen display.
Tesla is planning to show a prototype dubbed Tesla Bot this year.
Musk’s latest tweet seems to reinforce his tendency to slowly pivot the electric vehicle maker into an AI company.
h/t: Futurism
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