Did Elon Musk miss the point with the reveal of the Tesla Optimus at the recent WeRobot event? I think the answer is yes, and in this Icebreaker episode of the Implausipod, we're going to tell you why. At the recent Tesla reveal party hosted by Elon Musk, they showed off some of their new technology that would soon be coming to market.

The audience in attendance and those viewed on the internet saw images straight out of a sci fi movie like iRobot, with autonomous robo taxis and smooth, sleek humanoid robots. And while visually impressive, with cowboy bartenders interacting with customers and serving up drinks and robo dancers doing their thing, it was soon revealed that they weren't actually AI controlled, but were actually telepresence units with a human operator.

Now there are some AI systems built into those machines that allowed them to stay upright and move around, and that's still impressive, but not actually what was advertised, which is why it's a bit of a fail. Don't get me wrong, Being able to bring a humanoid telepresence machine to market would be very impressive.

There's a lot of use for it right now, and there might even be more use for it in the future. If anyone besides me on the internet remembers the 2009 Bruce Willis movie Surrogates, you'd have an idea of what that telepresence rig would be like. And telerobotics and telepresence have long been a game changer.

With a number of different groups working within the high technology sector. I've got books on that going back to the 1980s, and we've mentioned it several times on the podcast before, like on our episodes on Echanger and the Butlerian Jihad. The reason why a humanoid telepresence rig, basically a drone with legs, is so attractive is because it solves a particular problem, and that problem is the path dependency of the built environment.

We as humans have long been making human sized structures and systems for a long time, because we're us, obviously, so that anything that works within the environment that we've built, like a robot for instance, would have to either be designed and built for that environment, or we'd have to make concessions for it, like making ramps rather than having them deal with stairs or, you know, turn door handles or the like.

And there's a lot of different options to design for, so in theory it's more effective to create something that can just fit within that built environment. So what Tesla revealed is actually very impressive, but they're using this technology to demo something that they don't have. A fully autonomous robot linked up to various AI systems.

Now, there's competitors within that space. We've all seen various videos from Boston Dynamics showing off their Atlas systems. For example, the point we're making is that there's competition there and the fact that Tesla had to fake it to agree can go a long way to explain why they lost 50 billion in market share shortly after the demo.

So I get why they're doing what they're doing. They want to appear competitive with the other companies that are in that market segment. But I think they'd be better off focusing on what they're actually bringing to market because there's real world uses for the telepresence units right now. I mean, it's unlikely that they'd sell 8 billion of them, one for everybody on the planet, as Musk is claiming, as not everybody needs this.

But there's very specific use cases, not only in remote operations and dangerous environments, telepresence for individuals as an assistive technology, or even as a remote technology for someone who's like a remote home aid. Station a few of these in the homes of clients and be able to slot into them as needed.

You cut down on the commute time, the travel time, and all the rest. As our population is increasingly aging and we're facing a home care worker shortage, this might be something that's more and more desirable, something we've even become accustomed to. And there's other uses that this tech could be put towards besides.

But instead, we got robot cowboy bartenders. And it feels like Elon's missing the point. He's using a decent technology outside of its element, outside of its context to fake a technology that isn't quite there yet and still might be some ways off because there's obvious real world uses for this technology right now.

I hope they're able to come away from this regroup, give it a sober second look and find a way to bring it to market because I think they have a winner is just not the winner that they thought they had. And as we said repeatedly in a recent episode, the street finds its own uses for things. But sometimes the trick is making sure that that technology gets to the street in the first place.

This has been Dr. Implausible with an Implausipod Icebreaker. Content is licensed under a Creative Commons 4. 0 share alike license. You can reach me at the link in the show notes. Until next time, take care, have fun.