Elon Musk Announces The Tesla Bot, A Humanoid Robot Designed To Be ‘Friendly’

Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, says that the company is working on making humanoid robots and that it plans to have a working prototype ready to show off “sometime next year.”

According to The Verge, Musk sought to allay fears by saying the robot was designed to be “friendly” which will likely do nothing to persuade people that we’re getting worryingly close to Terminators.

Musk, who has spoken repeatedly about his fears of runaway artificial intelligence, said the Tesla Bot is “intended to be friendly,” but that the company is designing the machine at a “mechanical level” so that “you can run away from it, and most likely overpower it.” It will be five feet, eight inches tall, weigh 125 pounds, and have a screen for a face. The code name for the bot inside the company is “Optimus,” he said.

Tesla says the robots will be designed for “tasks that are unsafe, repetitive or boring,” be that’s as much information we’re going to get for now.

Tesla has a history of coming up with pie in the sky ideas like this, and while some of them don’t come off it’s fair to say that some do. Whether the humanoid robot idea will be one that gets traction or not, we’ll see.

One thing is for sure — given Tesla’s history of not hitting timescales, “sometime next year” seems very optimistic right now.

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