Musk's Humanoid Robot is Another Robotaxi
Why Elon Musk still doesn't know what he's talking about
Earlier this month, Elon Musk announced a new humanoid robotic servant. He says Tesla will create a prototype in a year.
He said it would be friendly, and navigate through a world of humans, and eliminate dangerous, repetitive and boring tasks. He said it could "go to the store and get me the following groceries."
Either Musk does not intend his announcement to be taken seriously, or he is simply ignorant about the challenges of building intelligent robots. Probably the latter.
Now, before Musk fans start jumping all over me, let me acknowledge that Elon Musk has successfully built two high-tech businesses, Tesla and SpaceX, and that he knows much more about raising money than I ever will.
But those products are quite different from intelligent robots. Cars have been with us for over a century, and modern rockets for over sixty years. These are well-understood technologies and businesses. While innovative, electric cars and reusable rockets are only incremental improvements.
Building intelligent robots
Building intelligent robots is a completely different problem. To date, the only ones that have actually been commercially successful are robotic home vacuum cleaners. The leading contender, iRobot's Roomba, has sold millions.
But even the Roomba is only a simple electric mechanism that's about as intelligent as a bacterium. A robotic helper that can do even very basic tasks requires a lot more smarts than that. And it's nowhere on the horizon.