Musk recently appeared at TED to discuss the future of Optimus and humanoid robots in society with Chris Anderson, and Musk also revealed the production schedule and estimated price of Tesla's humanoid robot Optimus.
Musk said: "Tesla tends to make a robot for dangerous, boring, repetitive and things that people don't want to do"; in addition, Tesla will show a "prototype" of the Optimus robot sometime this year, and by 2023 "there may be something useful" appearing, and by 2025 or so, optimus utility will grow rapidly and become a reality.
In addition to optimus production schedules, Musk and Anderson discussed the possible role optimus might play in the home environment, with Anderson arguing that Tesla's humanoid robot could be called some sort of personal butler, while Musk also said optimus has many useful applications and forms, such as a catwoman, in addition to being more of a robot.
Should Tesla make catwoman robots? - Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 29, 2020
In addition, with the expansion of the useful functions of humanoid robots, when the production scale of Optimus becomes larger, the price of Optimus will be lower than the price of a car (Musk: "I think the cost of Optimus will actually not be crazy, not even the price of a car"), of course, Musk did not disclose which brand is used as a car compared to the price of Optimus, however, Anderson said it was priced at about $25,000 (about 159,000 yuan).
Anderson then asked a question that many have been pondering since Tesla launched Optimus: How it will affect the job market. Anderson believes that the price of humanoid robot workers is much lower per year compared to human employees, and robots can work long hours without having to go on vacation, which will not cause widespread unemployment for some people.
Musk said: "I think we actually have a lot of labor shortages, so I don't think we're going to put people out of work because in the future we're still very short of labor," Musk also briefly talked about the problem of human labor shortages caused by the decline in the birth rate at the Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit.
In addition to the labor factor, Musk also said that they have developed some safety protocols for Tesla's humanoid robots, which also provides a reference for the large-scale application of robots in the future. Musk said: "I think one of the important things is to install a localized ROM chip on the robot that can't be updated wirelessly, and if you say 'stop stop stop,' the robot will stop." ”