Elon Musk: Optimus and the End of Physical Labor—Humanoid Robots Will Redefine the Economy

Elon Musk presenting Optimus in 2021: “Our cars are like semi-sentient robots on wheels. It kind of makes sense to put that onto a humanoid form.”

“Tesla is arguably the world's biggest robotics company because our cars are like semi-sentient robots on wheels. With the full self-driving computer and Dojo and all the neural nets, recognizing the world, understanding how to navigate through the world, it kind of makes sense to put that onto a humanoid form. And we're also quite good at sensors, batteries, and actuators.

It's intended to be friendly, of course, and navigate through a world built for humans and eliminate dangerous, repetitive, and boring tasks.

We're setting it such that, at a physical level, you can run away from it and most likely overpower it. If you run faster than five miles an hour, you'll be fine.

It's around 5.8 ft, it has a screen where the head is for useful information. It basically has the Autopilot system in it. It has eight cameras, a full self-driving computer, and is making use of the same tools that we use in the car.

Things that are really hard about having a useful humanoid robot is, can it navigate through the world without explicit, line-by-line instructions? Can you talk to it and say, please pick up that bolt and attach it to a car with that wrench? And it should be able to do that.

This, I think, will be quite profound, because if you say, what is the economy? At the foundation, it is labor. So, what happens when there is no shortage of labor? That's why I think, long-term, there will need to be universal basic income. Essentially, in the future, physical work will be a choice. If you want to do it, you can, but you won't need to do it.

This has profound implications for the economy. Because given that the economy, at its foundational level, is labor – capital equipment is just distilled labor – then, is there any actual limit to the economy? Maybe not.”

Initial presentation of the Tesla Bot at Tesla's AI Day, August 19, 2021