Elon Musk bets on Tesla Bot

How popular will an anthropomorphic robot be?

Tesla Bot helped Elon Musk rise to second place on the list of the richest people in the world. After the presentation, at which the business executive announced the release of a new android assistant, his fortune increased by $1.5 billion. Them not showing the finished prototype of the car on stage did not even embarrass investors. Musk promised that the new robot will go to the store, deal with other everyday problems, and, most likely, will not harm a person. Joseph Blumenthal with details.

There have already been a lot of anthropomorphic robots on the market: Japanese, South Korean, and American companies offered their versions.

But perhaps the most eccentric entrepreneur of our time, Elon Musk, again found something to surprise and showed the Tesla Bot concept. The difference between this robot and all other anthropomorphic ones is that it looks completely like a human. The model has the same body proportions, including height. The weight, however, is a little more than usual, and the speed is only five miles per hour. But Musk assures the robot will take on all boring tasks. By them, the billionaire understands, for example, shopping trips.

They have not built the robot yet, but a man in a tight-fitting suit came out at the presentation: white fabric and a blackhead from head to toe. The concept of the future robot even danced. And Musk urged not to be afraid of the uprising of the machines.

But how realistic is such a development? The developments of Boston Dynamics are now considered to be breakthroughs in the market. More recently, inventors have shown that they could teach their cars parkour: robots cleverly overcame an obstacle course and fell like humans. But in the form they are far from anthropomorphic - they are dogs or bulky machines that only vaguely resemble a human body. Elon Musk promises, in fact, to create cyber-men. Joseph Blumenthal explains why such developments are still far away:

“The forecast is 30-40 years. Until technology got to where it became massive, safe, and highly useful. Cyborgs are, in fact, a combination of organic and inorganic matter. And the problem, which has not yet been solved, is how to safely and functionally interconnect the tissues, which sensors to use, and so on. What exists now is all short-term technologies. We can read some parameters with the help of electrodes or stimulate some brain segments, but all this requires constant replacement later. We do not yet know how to decode individual signals from neurons - there is still a lot of work to do”.

What if technology leaps forward soon and Musk actually introduces anthropomorphic robots to the market? Because of their specific form, their use in everyday life will depend on the "filling" - artificial intelligence, which will control the machine. And this can be difficult, says Joseph Blumenthal for Artificial Intelligence:

“In artificial intelligence, as in science, there is the Moravec paradox. It lies because high-level cognitive processes such as perception, thinking, decision-making are easy enough to simulate on a computer. But low-level processes, for example, how we unconsciously control our limbs, are almost impossible to reproduce in robots. And one task of such anthropomorphic robots will be to train such operational neural networks that control individual components - joints, limbs, how the robot moves in a domestic environment. "

It turns out that Musk is heating the market again and is dreaming of a great technological future rather than actually preparing a breakthrough. However, the ideas of an eccentric billionaire always seem at first glance impracticable, but in reality, it turns out that the Cybertruck truck is powerful, and Tesla speeds up faster than some sports cars, and flights to Mars are already being seriously discussed.