Recently, Elon Musk revealed the production time and estimated price of Tesla's humanoid robot Optimus at the TED Global Conference. Tesla's CEO spoke with TED founder Chris Anderson about the future of Optimus Prime and humanoid robots in society.
Optimus Prime robots and apps
Elon Musk told Anderson, "You know, the first products we made tended to be for dangerous, boring, repetitive jobs, and things that people didn't want to do. ”
Musk expects Tesla to show off an "interesting prototype" of Optimus Prime's robots sometime this year, and that by 2023 "there could be something useful." He predicts that he will see growth in Tesla's humanoid robot project over the next two years. Around 2025, the use of Optimus Prime robots will grow rapidly year by year.
During their conversation, Anderson and Musk spent some time imagining how Optimus would work in a home environment rather than a work environment. Anderson calls Tesla's humanoid robot a kind of personal butler. Elon Musk called Optimus More like a buddy robot with many useful applications and forms, including even a "Catwoman."
"Optimus Prime" robot price
As the useful features of humanoid robots expand, Musk believes Tesla will see costs fall, while Tesla will expand optimus prime production. As for the price of Optimus Prime, Elon Musk said: "I don't think the cost is actually going to be ridiculously high, it's not going to be lower than a car." ”
Unfortunately, Elon Musk did not specify the car make or model he used as the basis for Optimus Prime's price. However, Anderson's proposed price is about $25,000.
Optimus Prime and human workers
Anderson went on to ask a question that has been on many people's minds since Tesla launched the Optimus Prime robot: How it will affect the job market.
Musk has repeatedly said that Optimus Prime will initially be used for dangerous, monotonous work. However, as Tesla's humanoid robots gain more advanced capabilities, some wonder how it will affect the job market.
Anderson believes that the price of a humanoid robot worker is much lower than that of a human employee. In addition, human workers will not be able to work as long hours as humanoid robots.
"I'm not worried about putting people out of work," Musk replied. "I think we're actually going to face, and we're already facing, a huge labor shortage," he said. So I don't think we're going to put people out of work, but there's actually still a shortage of labor, even in the future. ”
Tesla's CEO has long talked about the manpower shortage. The cause of the human labor shortage may be the decline in the global birth rate. In an interview at the Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit, Musk spoke briefly about the decline in the birth rate.
Dystopian scenes
Elon Musk also talked about the possibility of a "dystopian scene" of optimus prime robots. Before Tesla announced plans to produce humanoid robots, Musk had been blunt about the impact of artificial intelligence on human survival. The Tesla CEO has been warning about the development of artificial intelligence and still stands by his beliefs to this day.
Musk mentioned that he has developed some safety protocols for Tesla's humanoid robots, which also shows that Tesla has done a lot of consideration when designing Optimus Prime.
Musk said: "I mean, obviously, we have to be careful not to let this become a dystopian situation. Musk said. I think one of the important things is to install a localized ROM chip on the robot that can't be updated over-the-air, for example, if you say 'stop, stop, stop', the robot will stop. ”