Friday, August 20, 2021

Elon Musk's Not-a-Robot



At Tesla's AI Day event on Thursday, Elon Musk publicly unveiled his concept for a Tesla robot that one day will perform the laborious tasks that humans don't want to do. He didn't unveil a robot, just a concept for a robot. 

Musk’s “robot” was just a person dancing around in a skintight full-body suit, but he promises that his electric car company really is working on something. And he really wants you to believe him this time.

“The Tesla bot will be real,” Musk said emphatically, trying to usher his fake robot off-stage on Thursday.

If you've read this far, you can watch the first couple of minutes of the video and skip the rest. While some of Musk's ideas have gotten off the ground, like Tesla electric cars and his Not a Flamethrower flamethrower, other ideas went to way of the dodo, like the Loop and the Cybertruck. To be honest, Thursday's pronouncement has happened before, as technologists envision the future of robots performing back-breaking labor so that humans can enjoy more free time. Gizmodo looks back at the same prediction happening in 1967, as well as a roundup of how Musk's presentation was covered elsewhere.

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