[imagesource:x/@MKBHD]
Although, on paper, Tesla’s ‘We, Robot’ event belonged to the robotaxi, the real star of the show turned out to be Elon Musk’s humanoid robot.
The Optimus robot mingled with the crowd, served drinks, played games with guests, and danced inside a gazebo. Most surprisingly, they seemed to even talk.
Except, as The Verge notes, it was all smoke and mirrors.
Attendee Robert Scoble revealed that humans were “remote assisting” the robots, later explaining that an engineer informed him the robots used AI for walking, as reported by Electrek. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas also noted that the robots “relied on tele-ops (human intervention),” according to the outlet.
Playing charades with the Tesla Optimus robot last night. This is either the single greatest robotics and LLM demo the world has ever seen, or it’s MOSTLY remote operated by a human. No in between. pic.twitter.com/vCqzk8DDdO
— Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) October 12, 2024
Just two years ago, the droid couldn’t even make it onto a stage on its own and now the latest iteration is suddenly talking with guests, playing rock-paper-scissors and flashing a peace sign with its metallic hand.
“This will be the biggest product ever—of any kind,” Musk predicted on stage that night.
Of course, if Optimus were truly a fully autonomous marvel, capable of instantly responding to verbal and visual cues while engaging one-on-one with humans in the dim glow of a crowded room, it would be nothing short of mind-blowing.
Except there were obvious tells that the robots were backed by humans, like the fact that the robots all have different voices or that their responses were immediate, with gesticulation to match.
I talked with an engineer.
When it walked that is AI running Optimus.
It is real impressive they brought so many out in crowds at @tesla’s event. https://t.co/CtmCKPrL4T
— Robert Scoble (@Scobleizer) October 11, 2024
Not that Tesla was going out of its way to make anyone think the Optimus machines were acting on their own. One admitted to being part AI when asked, while another robot — or the human voicing it — told an attendee in a stilted impression of a synthetic voice, “Today, I am assisted by a human,” adding that it’s not fully autonomous. (The voice stumbled on the word “autonomous.”)
Basically, if you were hoping to have any sense of how far along Tesla truly is in its humanoid robotics work, the ‘We, Robot’ event wasn’t the place to look.
[source:theverge]
