In huge news for supporters of the android apocalypse, Elon Musk has officially unveiled Tesla’s new humanoid robot, Optimus ‘Gen 2’. The tech billionaire made the announcement today (December 13), with an ominous video posted to X. Watch below.
The robot can reportedly walk 30 per cent faster and comes in 10 kilograms lighter than the first iteration that shambled about onstage at Tesla’s AI Day in 2022. In the video, we see it stroll past a line of Cybertrucks, show off its “improved balance” by performing a few squats, and bob around to EDM like a particularly lifeless NPC. “Is that all?” you might be thinking. But no. It can also pick up an egg.
Apparently, the robot’s new capacity for “delicate objects manipulation” is the next step toward a future where “physical work will be a choice”, as teased by Elon when the project was first announced in 2021. If this were to happen, of course, it would have a profound effect on the economy, which is already expecting significant shifts due to AI. It would also mean that humans no longer have to perform unsafe or boring tasks, assuming that there’s a safety net in place for those who are out of a job.
More worried that we’re giving a physical body to the very thing that tech leaders, including Elon himself, have called an extinction-level threat? Understandable. However, Elon has previously stated that the robots are designed to be “friendly” (reassuring!) and that most people will be able to outrun them, by design.
Other criticisms have honed in on the fact that Tesla’s robots aren’t particularly impressive compared to their industry rivals, like Boston Dynamics or Agility Robotics. The latter produces robots for Amazon, and you may remember it for working one of the poor little guys to death earlier this year (only joking, he just took a tumble – it happens to the best of us). Nevertheless, Elon says that his spooky humanoids have the potential to be “more significant” than Tesla’s main source of business, electric vehicles, sometime in the future.
A commercial version of Optimus is expected to be ready for customers within three to five years, according to Elon (who’s notoriously optimistic about timelines, so take it with a pinch of salt).