[imagesource:youtube/tesla]

So you know Elon Musk, who is supposedly quite alarmed by runaway artificial intelligence, having spoken about his fears repeatedly already, has been making his company, Tesla, work on humanoid robots.

When the Tesla Bot or Optimus was first introduced, many laughed it off as a distraction to Tesla’s more important mission, which is apparently to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy.

But new footage showcasing the prototypes has been quite impressive actually, suggesting that this sideshow could potentially become a real product soon enough.

Electrek notes that while people can see the value in a human-like robot (the Tesla CEO has angled it into something that can fix the labour crisis), the problem is that people can’t really see Tesla making it a reality, especially since the latest demo at Tesla AI Day last year wasn’t that amazing.

The very early prototype didn’t look like much, and just waved at the crowd while barely walking around:

Image: Tesla

The next prototype was more refined looking but was still not able to walk properly. Despite the slow progress, Elon remains convinced Tesla has an edge in the market, claiming that the Bots were a top priority at Tesla early last year:

Tesla claimed to have a great opportunity to develop this humanoid robot because it could leverage a lot of existing hardware developed for its electric vehicles and software from its self-driving technology.

Then, yesterday, Musk gave an update on the Tesla Bot at the 2023 shareholders meeting, which included way more impressive prospects.

The footage includes five Tesla Optimus prototypes performing simple tasks, walking around the office (stiffly, but better and more stable):

The hands are said to be the most impressive part, as they are the hardest to get right.

Musk reckons that the “Optimus stuff is extremely underrated”, adding that the demand could be as high as 10 to 20 billion units, even going so far as to “confidently predict” that Optimus will account for “a majority of Tesla’s long-term value”.

Electrek is giving credit where credit is due, noting that the latest developments are a significant improvement over the last demo, which was just about eight months ago.

Apparently, Tesla should be around three to four years away from a useful product.

[source:electrek]