Elon Musk has spent the last few weeks outlining a future with Optimus — one that will "eliminate" poverty, work, and require a universal income.

Elon Musk predicts Tesla’s Optimus robot will be a force for economic good — even if it ultimately eliminates much of the need for human labor.

While the humanoid robots are a production challenge and aren’t launching anytime soon, Tesla has demoed them handing out candy on Halloween, performing Kung Fu with Jared Leto, and dancing onstage at its recent shareholder meeting.

But Musk says he has an even bigger vision for the robots; he wants them to transform the economy.

“People often talk about eliminating poverty, giving everyone amazing medical care,” Musk said at the Thursday shareholder event. “There’s actually only one way to do that, and that’s with the Optimus robot.”

Musk later doubled down: “Optimus will actually eliminate poverty.”

  • barrbaric [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    46·
    18 days ago

    Well at least it’s not money going to LLM datacenters-

    “There’s limit to much how much AI can do in terms of enhancing the productivity of humans, but there is not really a limit to AI that is embodied,” Musk said.

    Ah. Well, at least it won’t be used in the prison-industrial comple-

    Musk also said that Optimus would change life for incarcerated people at the meeting. Instead of physically jailing prisoners, Optimus could “follow you around and stop you from doing crime,” he said.

    Unrelated but this is hilarious

    Tesla is currently in the design stage for Optimus, which Musk has said has proven challenging — especially when it comes to the robot’s hands. Musk said that he eventually expects to be able to sell Optimus for $20,000 to $30,000 once the robots hit volume production.

    Sure, buddy, the cheapest Tesla is ~$43kUSD, and these robots for which there generally aren’t off the shelf parts or infrastructure will be half that? You’re definitely going to sell a million of these in the next decade.