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Elon Musk says Tesla ending Models S and X production, converting Fremont factory lines to make Optimus robots (www.cnbc.com)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 8 points 9 months ago (5 children)

I just don't understand who the market is supposed to be for humanoid robots. Manufacturing? They've already built bespoke task-centric robots. Consumers and businesses? They can already hire a real person without spending money upfront to "purchase" said person. I just don't see the use case. It feels like another metaverse or smart glasses. Just another desperate grab at investor money and trying to claim the next "big thing".

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  • [–] 9 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

    I mean, human environments are intrinsically made for humanoids to navigate. Like, okay, we put stairs places, things like that. So in theory, yeah, a humanoid form makes sense if you want to stick robots in a human environment.

    But in practice, I think that there are all kinds of problems to be solved with humans and robots interacting in the same space and getting robots to do human things. Even just basic safety stuff, much less being able to reasonably do general interactions in a human environment. Tesla spent a long time on FSD for its vehicles, and that's a much-more-limited-scope problem.

    Like, humanoid robots have been a thing in sci-fi for a long time, but I'm not sold that they're a great near-term solution.

    If you ever look at those Boston Dynamics demos, you'll note that they do them in a (rather-scuffed-up) lab with safety glass and barriers and all that.

    I'm not saying that it's not possible to make a viable humanoid robot at some point. But I don't think that the kind of thing that Musk has claimed it'll be useful for:

    “It’ll do anything you want,” Musk said. “It can be a teacher, babysit your kids; it can walk your dog, mow your lawn, get the groceries; just be your friend, serve drinks. Whatever you can think of, it will do.”

    ...a sort of Rosie The Robot from The Jetsons, is likely going to be at all reasonable for quite some time.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago

    I guess the point I was trying to make in my original post is - say we invent human robots tomorrow - what's better about them than actual humans, which we already have an unlimited supply of? It just seems like a god complex thing to me, not really solving any major problems for humanity.

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