In summary
- Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he sees a future in which humans will have to find new ways to give purpose to their lives, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence and robotics.
- Musk envisions a future where the human workforce is a thing of the past, and artificial intelligence can do everything humans can do, but better.
- Musk also discussed Tesla’s development of the Optimus robot, noting that the next generation of the Optimus hand will have 22 degrees of freedom, allowing the robot to perform almost anything a human can do.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he sees a future in which humans will have to find new ways to give purpose to their lives, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence and robotics.
During a panel discussion at the 2024 All-In Summit hosted by the All-In Podcast, Musk repeated comments he made during a fireside chat at the AI Security Summit at Bletchley Park in England last year. He said he envisions a future where the human workforce is a thing of the past.
“I think the real problem, the most likely problem, is how do we find meaning in a world where AI can do everything we can do, but better. That’s perhaps the biggest challenge,” Musk said.
He noted that the Turing test, once a benchmark for measuring how convincingly a computer could emulate human conversation, is no longer relevant.
“Even though at this point, I know more and more people who are retired and seem to be enjoying that life, I think there might be some crisis of meaning because the computer can do everything you can do, but better,” he reiterated.
This shift, Musk says, would be facilitated by the development of self-driving cars and humanoid robots, which could infinitely increase economic growth and productivity.
“If you have humanoid robots, when there is no real limit on the number of humanoid robots, and they can operate very intelligently, then there is no real limit to the economics of that,” he said. “There is no significant limit to the economics.”
Musk said that through the development of the Optimus robot at Tesla, the company has learned a lot about how the human body works and why it is shaped the way it is. He referred to the shape of the fingers and thumb, which will guide future developments of Optimus.
“The current version of the Optimus hand has the actuators in the hand and it only has 11 degrees of freedom, so it doesn’t have all the degrees of freedom of the human hand, which has—depending on how you count them—about 25 degrees of freedom,” he said, adding that this limits the strength the robot can exert.
“In the next generation of the Optimus hand, which we have in prototype form, the actuators have been moved to the forearm, just like in a human, and they operate the fingers via cables, just like the human hand,” Musk said. “The next generation hand has 22 degrees of freedom, which we think is enough to do almost anything a human can do.”
Musk, along with Tesla, is in a race to build and bring large-scale humanoid robots to market against rival developers including Figure AI, OpenAI-backed 1X, Meta, Nvidia, and German automaker Mercedes-Benz.
Because of the push to develop AI-powered humanoid robots for homes and businesses, Musk said he envisions they will eventually outnumber humans two to one.
“I think the number of robots will vastly outnumber the number of humans,” he said. “You have to say, ‘Who wouldn’t want to have their robot friend?’ Everybody wants a robot friend.”
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