They dance, clean, cook, raise weights … With Optimus, Elon Musk aims to replace human work and redesign the future of humanity
During the recent tours in Saudi and Qatar Arabia, in the wake of the casual and muscle approach of the White House, Elon Musk used a consolidated technique to “present” Optimus, the robot prototype with which he intends to invade the markets in the near future. The technique is that of sensational announcements, in unstable balance between the impossible shooting and the future but close anticipation. Optimus, who you see on the page, was presented as an imminent protagonist on the world scene, perhaps excessively boldly. It is a model in which Musk’s visions converge, understood both as an idea of the future and as a conception of the role of technology in the salvation of mankind.
The videos of the automotive, easily available on YouTube, are disturbing in their charm: The prototypes dance, sway, walk, grab objects, open drawers, raise weights, mix ingredients in a pot. They have a screen on the face and their anthropomorphism exceeds the similarity with some characteristics of the human body. “Musk was interested in humanoid robots for the same mixture of attraction and fear that artificial intelligence aroused him,” explains Walter Isaacson in the most accurate biographies of the founder of Tesla translated by Mondadori: “The idea that someone could create, intentionally or inadvertently, an Aim capable of giving damage to human beings had led him to found it in 2014. To start related initiatives such as autonomous driving cars, a supercomputer named “Dojo” that trained artificial neural networks to simulate the encephalic operation and neuralink microchips to be implanted in the brain to produce a relationship of close symbiosis between men and machines. The maximum expression of an AIA without risk would have been the creation of a humanoid robot capable of developing visual inputs and learning to perform tasks without violating the Asimov’s law that prohibits a robot of harming humanity or a single human being “.
It is optimus: anthropomorphic in learning, not only in features. The “katechondic” obsession, that is, must retain the diabolical technological force from dominating man, for the South African genius it is realized by “learning” neural networks and machines by imitation of humans. Optimus must “see” with viewers and cameras, imitate movements and gestures learned from the vision of movements and gestures of natural persons. «Optimus, he said, would have learned to perform homework without the need for row row instructions. Like a human being, he would have learned through simple observation. This, he concluded, would have revolutionized not only the economy, but also the way of life of humanity, “Isaacson reports again. This principle is for Musk pillar essential of any technological projection under its control (and not few). It could be said that his design and productive fury is unleashed when he feels invested with the mission to overtake other innovators (the former team Sam Altman, but not only) without this concern to stem the overwhelmingness of the machines.
It remains a necessary question: why do robot? The exclusive profit research is not the right answer to approach Musk’s ideological dimension. Obviously he hopes to build a profitable model, but his techno-optimism pushes him first of all in search of devices that improve his life, increase his potential and thug that defines the conscience of mankind by the threat of artificial intelligence that could soon consider men inferior to be eliminated (it is the same reason why it believes essentially to bring man permanently to Mars). Specifically, Optimus is designed as a “worker” in Tesla factories “by the end of this year” (so he said in Qatar). Then its production scale will be increased at the level of millions every year by 2030: “The demand will become insatiable, everyone will want one”. To do what? Heavy, repetitive works, potentially any activity that physically emails the human one.
Compared to the ideas and projects of any other genius with capital, Elon Musk has some things that do not authorize to neglect what he has in mind, and it is not just more money. The first thing is the allies, Trump aside. The patron of X recently dialogue of these affairs with Satya Nadella, head of Microsoft with which he announced a structural partnership; And he shares the centrality of the robots with Jensen Huang, the legendary CEO of Nvidia: “He is working on the right things,” said Huang talking about Musk and his Optimus project. According to the leader of the world giant of chips, in fact, Elon’s products are the only ones who, by scale and future diffusion, can tow the investments and the production of increasingly efficient and fast chips. The second thing is the curriculum. Whatever you can think of Musk, it is complex to deny that it has not revolutionized electric cars, satellites, rockets and communications: more or less all the sectors in which she has squeezed minds and bodies of thousands of engineers. The third thing is the ability to estimate the impacts of its inventions. In a world where in a few years with $ 30,000 (this is Musk’s estimate), a “worker” is obtained able to carry out advanced tasks, who works? «At that point, it will perhaps be necessary to establish a universal minimum income. And work could become a free choice, “he explained to his technicians. It would be very interesting, on this and beyond, a meeting with Leone XIV.
