Silicon Valley is racing to create the first era of “humanoid” robots, with many tech firms promising shoppers that they’ll quickly have their very personal, live-in robo-helper to do the dishes, sweep the ground, and usually deal with all of the annoying home tasks that you simply don’t need to do. Nevertheless, the unlucky fact is that, if latest occasions are any indicator, we shouldn’t count on a robo-butler anytime quickly.
The latest occasion I’m referring to is that this: Elon Musk shared a video on X over the weekend that appeared to indicate Tesla’s robotic, “Optimus” (just like the Transformer), folding a shirt. Musk appeared to hope individuals could be impressed with this show of automation however, personally, I used to be underwhelmed. In spite of everything, most individuals can fold shirts. I’m horrible at doing laundry however am firmly assured that if referred to as upon to interact in a shirt-folding contest with Optimus I’d beat him handily. It made me surprise why somebody like Musk would need to pour gargantuan quantities of cash into making a machine that may barely do a factor that everyone already is aware of the best way to do. Even worse, it seems that Musk’s video was staged, though it’s not fully clear how.
Musk adopted up his authentic submit with a clarification in regards to the robotic’s shirt-folding capabilities:
“Necessary observe: Optimus can not but do that autonomously, however actually will have the ability to do that absolutely autonomously and in an arbitrary setting (received’t require a hard and fast desk with field that has just one shirt).”
Whereas it’s not completely clear what Musk is speaking about, it actually makes it sound just like the robotic can’t really fold a shirt but. Or, on the very least, it wanted some human help to take action.
Commenters on X responded to Musk’s video with a mixture of admiration, bewilderment, and mock. Some have been confused about how the video was made if the robotic didn’t even have this capability but. One commenter quipped: “Yeah however my spouse can do it whereas holding our child and screaming on the cellphone at somebody whereas consuming lunch… can he?”
For the reason that Tesla bot was introduced a number of years again, it’s been much less a subject of hypothesis and pleasure than laughter and mock. Certainly, the primary glimpse of the “Tesla bot” that the world received was only a man in a spandex go well with. At that time limit, Tesla didn’t but have a public-facing prototype prepared, so Musk simply despatched some poor doofus out to a press occasion dressed just like the Silver Surfer. Then, when a working prototype of the bot was lastly unveiled at Tesla’s AI Day in 2022, it didn’t do a lot besides stagger round and narrowly keep away from face-planting in entrance of onlookers. Now, we all know that it may well fold a shirt. Effectively, sorta.
Briefly: Whereas we preserve listening to that the robotic rebellion is imminent, all seen proof continues to level on the contrary—at the very least, in the interim.