Why The Tesla Robot Won't Work

"Tesla is arguably the world’s biggest robotics company because our cars are like semi-sentient robots on wheels" -Elon Musk

Last year during Tesla's open AI day, Elon Musk announced something new Tesla was working on called the Tesla robot.

A lot of people I've spoken to have no idea what the Tesla robot is, what it is for, how it will work, and why it's not feasible. All they know is it's another cool piece of tech created by Tesla.

In this article, I will be talking about what the Tesla robot is, what it will do and how it will work.

What is Tesla?

I know pretty much anyone who is on the internet knows about Tesla, but for the sake of completion let's still go over what Tesla is.

According to Wikipedia, Tesla, Inc. is an American electric vehicle and clean energy company based in Palo Alto, California, United States. Tesla designs and manufactures electric cars, battery energy storage from home to grid-scale, solar panels and solar roof tiles, and related products and services.

In simple everyday words, Tesla is a company that makes electric cars, electric car batteries, solar panels, and everything in-between. At least that's what we all know Tesla as.

But according to what Elon Musk said during Tesla's open AI day, Tesla sees itself as a robotics company, due to the unique way its cars are built. To paraphrase Elon, Tesla is actually a robotics company because to them their cars are actually "semi-sentient" robots on wheels.

Now, talking about the difference between what we know Tesla as and what Tesla sees itself as is way out of the scope of this article. Click here to watch a video of the entire Tesla Open AI day (👌).

Now off to the good stuff

What is the Tesla robot?

According to Tesla, the Tesla robot is a "general-purpose, bi-pedal, humanoid robot capable of performing tasks that are unsafe, repetitive or boring."

In simple words, the Tesla robot is a robot that looks like a human, can walk on two legs and is capable of performing a variety of activities that are mostly regarded as boring by WE humans 😉.

In detail, the Tesla robot is a robot created by Tesla which will look like a human being and will be trained using the same type of technology used on Tesla's self-driving feature.

The big data processing which will be used to train the AI for the tesla robot will be done using Tesla's new in-house supercomputer named.... wait for it dojo (cool name huh😅).

What will the Tesla Robot do**?**

According to Tesla, The Tesla robot is going to be built mostly to assist humans in repetitive boring tasks.

In other words, the Tesla robot is being built so we as humans don't have to do those boring repetitive tasks like going to the market to buy stuff for food, going to pick up groceries, walking the dog, etc.

Is the Tesla Robot safe?

Below is a picture showing a few of the technical specs of the Tesla robot:

According to the specifications given by Tesla during the AI day, the Tesla robot was purposely built in a non-threatening way with a height of 5'8", 5 fingers on each arm, no toes just a flat shoe like surface, and a max speed of 7-10 miles per hour supposedly so you can easily outrun it, (why?🧐 I have no idea🙄).

So for those of you looking for a yes/no answer, if the Tesla robot is actually built according to the specifications shown then, yes, it will be safe but if it isn't, well…

And now we ask:

How will the Tesla Robot work?

The Tesla robot will be built with similar sensors to that used on Tesla cars and its AI will be trained on the data used to train Tesla's self-driving AI so the Tesla robot will be able to make logical decisions based on the events happening in its environment. It will also be able to learn from new events happening around it.

According to the reports by Tesla during their AI day, The data processing to be done on the Tesla robot will be performed by Tesla's new in-house supercomputer named dojo.

The Tesla robot will work based on commands given to it by its human handler.

Why doesn't the Tesla Robot make sense?

Don't get me wrong the Tesla robot is a really cool thing but it doesn't make sense and I'll tell you why.

According to experts, robots are usually physically built based on the tasks they are going to be performing and in that way, they are usually optimized for those tasks that's why floor cleaning robots are usually built as vacuum cleaners, dishwashing bots are usually built as dishwashers, etc...

Now during Tesla's open AI day, they spoke about the robot doing groceries which I guess it can do but what other activities is the Tesla robot optimized for?

The fact that the bot was built like a human is really cool but apart from that why else was it built that way? The power we humans have is our brains and that's something AI engineers (like myself) haven't been able to replicate.

The pure truth is we humans aren't optimized for most "boring and repetitive tasks" that's why we created machines and tools to make it easier for us so why build a robot which was meant for those "boring and repetitive tasks" in the same way organisms which aren't meant for those tasks are built, it makes no sense.

Summary

The new Tesla robot is a really awesome development in the tech space; one worth mentioning and looking out for not only because of the Elon Musk factor (though that is a chill factor 😅), but also because of its potential to change the way we humans live life.

While it is understandable to have doubts, it is also paramount to have an open mind.

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