Elon is the gift that keeps on giving. He’s decided that because it’s Friday, we should all have a pile in.
On a less scornful and more serious note. If he could get a working prototype up, it would be a good thing. Though I suspect that he along with all the other stupidly rich people would go out of their way to vote against providing parachute policies for the economy such as UBI for all the displaced employees.
So, car factories have used custom built robots on assembly lines for decades, I want to say close to a half century? Why on earth would anybody want to replace those with humanoid robots other than, I dunno, having severed ties with reality to live out his days in a deluded fantasy?
This is as great example of Musk’s “”“genius”“” as that time he decided to move a Twitter data centre with the help of his own incapable hands, a cousin and some homeless people.
Just like the “tesla hyperloop” or whatever they’re calling it, it’s not about innovation. It’s about keeping his brands in the public eye as a form of marketing. Even if on a logical level we all know it’s horseshit, it still keeps himself and Tesla salient.
He can afford to burn an incomprehensible amount of money on stunts for outcomes most people would consider inconsequential.
I’m not saying it’s 4D chess, it definitely isn’t. He’s not particularly intelligent in that way. That said, I do think there are some very simple reasons for him to do this that go beyond his absolutely insane delusional ego.
He has enough money that he can continue funding whatever he wants regardless of public opinion. He literally exists at a level where any press is good press as it keeps him fresh in peoples’ minds.
Whole point of the Hyperloop was to stop California from building out high speed rail. And it worked. Musky thought it would cut into his EV sales.
I hear your scepticism, but unfortunately your thinking is exactly what’s enabled Tesla to grow as they have. There was a documentary that looked at it impartially and unfortunately there’s a lot of legacy debt in making cars and things that are more efficient aren’t used because of that legacy debt. When MKBHD did a tour, he looked at the fact that humans are needed for certain things, so I can see them wanting to replace them humans ASAP. Especially as the humans are trying to unionize.
I don’t know the source, so it’s hard for me to comment but logically the problem as stated is plausible. i.e. legacy debt preventing the move to more efficient methods.
However, the conclusion i.e. therefore replace humans with humanoid robots does not. And then tacking on unionization is just a different subject altogether. You can staff some aspects of a factory with robots and the human’s work shifts from production to maintenance. I’ve talked to automation people and robots can be very problematic and something “advanced” I would imagine much more so.
Although not recent, some referred to the robots as “Bob” blind one-arm builders. If very well calibrated and designed for a specific task, they can be ok, except when they go wrong. To think some “AI” driven general purpose robot is going to substantially replace human labor any time soon… I very seriously doubt that. Especially with that kook as leadership.
Fair
Oh look. Musk hate. How refreshing
To be fair, he is incredibly, and deservedly hateable