Jobs under threat? Elon Musk's ‘Tesla Bot’ is trained to eliminate repetitive tasks
PremiumMusk said Thursday he would have an initial prototype of an androgynous ‘Tesla Bot’ by next year.
SpaceX founder and Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Friday announced his latest mission: humanoid robots. After dominating the electric vehicle market and throwing his hat into the billionaire space race, Elon Musk now wants to make physical work optional.
Musk said Thursday he would have an initial prototype of an androgynous "Tesla Bot" by next year.
Based on the same technology as the company's semi-autonomous vehicles, the robot will be able to perform basic repetitive tasks with the aim of eliminating the need for people to handle dangerous or boring work, Musk said at an online event on Tesla's advances in artificial intelligence (AI).
"Tesla is arguably the world's biggest robotics company because cars are semi-sentient robots on wheels," he said. "It kind of makes sense to put that into a humanoid form."
Tesla's touting of its automation technology comes as the carmaker faces increased scrutiny over its driver-assistance system, with safety regulators in the United States launching a probe after a series of crashes.
Instead, Musk pledged that his future robot would be a benign presence.
He said the Tesla Bot, which will have five-fingered hands and come in black and white, is intended to be "friendly" and built such that "you can run away from it and most likely overpower it."
"Hopefully that won't happen, but you never know," he joked.
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Musk, the second richest person in the world according to Forbes, told the conference he believes robots will phase out physical labor for people. "I think essentially in the future physical work will be a choice," he said.
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