That's a wee bit embarassing. Back when I was in high school, we made a robotic arm dance autonomously, and we didn't have a press conference for it (though obnoxious music was admittedly part). It's a little funny that all the R&D money in the world won't make you a humanoid robot prototype these days, so they decided to throw in the towel altogether. Good to see that Tesla has as little faith in these things as I do.
Actually this might be closer to the first real application to humanoid robots than thought: We might use them for telepresence, so as a sort of "suit" (just remotely controlled, not directly on your skin).
So I doubt they will be useful in the pure AI form in the foreseeable future. However, for telepresence these would be ideal. Just imagine being able to fold the laundry while you are on the commuter train, coming home to folded laundry. Or you could delegate those chores entirely to people in a country with lower wages. Right now many foreign workers in that industry live away from their families. With such robots, they could be in their home countries.
I wonder if we put AI in a humanoid form, it may find a more efficient form of movement with limbs which look very odd to us. Then we need to put some hacks or artificial constraints to make it behave similar to a human.
Humanoid robots won't be feasible while we're still tethered to existing Li-ion battery technology. The two advancements in robotics in recent years, Boston Dynamics' Atlas and Spot, have battery lives of 60 minutes and 90 minutes respectively. With a recharge requiring multiple hours, unless these things are tethered or we invent some kind of electrified floor tech, they are too niche and uneconomical, sadly.
Tesla bot is another marketing gimmick, but if someone going to invest in making better robotic arms, mimicking the mechanics of animal movement or inventing new flexible & light-weight materials and batteries, than regardless of the state of "AI" it has immediate applications.
By the time actual AI will be developed (by neuroscientists building a model of animal cognition) we will have a realistic android body to plug it into with all the mechanics, motor controls and materials science worked out.
AI and robotic engineering/biomechanics are largely orthogonal and can develop in parallel.
I hope this isn't a trend where journalists are shoving "truth" down our throats instead of letting their sources make the claims. It's patronizing and off-putting to be told what to think so directly. I want entertainment, not indoctrination.
I don't like the cynical style of this article, but I strongly disagree with your hope. On the contrary, journalists should be critical and give a clear narrative.
It is an odditiy of modern (mainly anglo-saxon) media that it 'quotes' people to express its viewpoint. You can find a source to say any stupid thing or to provide quotes for any possible agenda, and uncritically quoting a press release or company presentation is not really adding value.
Added value of good media is that it both informs and clearly makes judgements or provides interpretation. This should be transparent of course, not hidden behind 'expert quotes' that are just as biased as any journalist might be. I should also not be pure expression of opinions, but rather facts, analysis and a suggestion of a conclusion. I think the article provides this, even if it has a rather impolite style.
It is opinions though. "biggest robotics company" and "semi-sentient robots" are fuzzy statements subjectively redefined by the author in a way that enables her to claim they're false.
Agreed, the author clearly has a strong anti-Tesla bias, and the article is intended as a hit piece. And not particularly witty or insightful either, just one insult after another. It's too bad there wasn't a more substantive discussion.
Tesla's presentation was pretty light on details about the robot, though, so I'm not sure what else could be said.
It was awesome, so funny. Probably the highlight of 2021. The music is great and "the joke" was well enough executed (no one is angry, we didn't get really fooled for long... and we are all well entertained).
It shows what (trained) humans are all capable of, which is incredible and what humanoid robots lack on the way there. Probably it's another of Elon's genius moves to predict/work towards humanoid robots.
