The billionaire anticipates a prototype to roll out in 2022.
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August 20, 2021 2 min read
Elon Musk announced Thursday night that his company, Tesla, is creating a humanoid robot. He anticipates a prototype to roll out in 2022.
He did not mention a price point or where he’ll make the robot — which will have a screen full of “useful information” where a human face would be — available for purchase.
“It’s basically going to start dealing with work that is boring, repetitive and dangerous,” he said during Tesla’s AI Day. He added, “What is the work that people would least like to do?”
Musk’s view is that physical labor will one day be a choice, his robot will have a “profound” impact on the economy and universal basic income will be necessary.
Related: The United States to investigate Tesla’s ‘autopilot’ system
Disrupting the labor force is the latest move from Musk, whose past work has disrupted the auto and space industries. Still, consumers interested in the humanoid bot might have to wait, if history is any indication. Earlier this month, production on Tesla’s Cybertruck was delayed until 2022 after Musk said in 2019 that they’d be available in 2021.
His AI programming has also come under fire recently. American auto safety regulators also opened a formal safety probe into Tesla’s Autopilot program last week following a number of crashes that involved emergency vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced the probe Monday, pointing out that since January 2018, it found 11 crashes in which Tesla vehicles “encountered first responder scenes and subsequently struck one or more vehicles involved with those scenes.”
In those, it said, there were 17 injuries and one death.
