Elon Musk: Optimus May Take Us Toward a Kardashev-Level Civilization

Elon Musk on Optimus' potential: “We're still pretty far from Kardashev scales here, but we're getting there.”

“You start getting into interesting questions like what's the ratio of humans to humanoid robots? I think it might be greater than one-to-one, because you could see a home use for robots, certainly industrial uses for robots, humanoid robots. I think we might exceed a one-to-one ratio of humanoid robots to humans.

It's not even clear what an economy means at that point, since an economy is output per person times persons. But if output is much higher and there's no limit on persons, then what's the actual limit on the economy? We're still pretty far from Kardashev scales here, but we're getting there.

So anyway, it's probably the least understood or appreciated part of what we're doing at Tesla, but will probably be worth significantly more than the car side of things long-term.”

Tesla Investor Day, March 1, 2023