philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Why the Tesla Humanoid Robot Matters

... If you buy into the premise that we are about to see changes in the technologies that go into robots – the AI, the electric motors, the sensor arrays, and in how, even, humans are living – then you will accept that the person who is interacting with the robot will change that person from deciding on the brand of soap used in the home, for instance, to letting the robot decide. In our research we’ve found that humans will accept these kinds of changes faster than most consumer products companies believe they will. ...

The robot brings other robots. (The autonomous vehicle, er, a robot, will bring the humanoid robot to your home, which will bring other, more specialized robots in. This turns everything into a service).

That statement alone brings radical shifts to the economy.  ...

The autonomous vehicle unlocks a new business model of turning everything into a service and sharing the robot’s cost amongst many homes.  ...

Why now? Because Tesla is updating the status of their Optimus humanoid robot and possibly demonstrating an early version of it on September 30, 2022. ...

Would you trust a robot that just did what you told it with no personality? Not as much as if it talked to you in a human way, and, even, entertained you. Adrian Kaehler discovered this while running the Giant AI company (now out of business, but it was working with factory owners to build a humanoid robot run by AI, just like Tesla is). He discovered that when they made their robot look, and act, more like a human that people accepted it more readily than their earlier prototypes that just looked like a machine with hands. ...

Once the robot gets access to the home it can start optimizing it. Looking for things that could be improved. It also is paying attention to the humans in the home, and is building an internal database of things it learns about you as it watches you. ...

Our thesis is that the biggest dataset wins a lot. ...

See the full article here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/announcement-why-tesla-humanoid-robot-matters-robert-scoble/?trackingId=dVpdnnbwR7KfMnusD0TzVw%3D%3D

PhilNote: My comment on this post: Excellent piece. I don't think you realize that buried inside piece of internalized Silicon Valley boosterism is a true horror story. "Optimizing" the home and the humans in it is marketing-speak for extending the current echo chambers into every aspect of life, while friendly relatable robots being better able to convince consumers to transition away from the old and toward the new products and services is potentially the next gen marketing communications channel. In this future you don't know what you are not being told even more than we are unaware today. As we have seen many times in the past, at some future date after deployment of 'life-improving' technology someone will discover that the tech implementation isn't as neutral as it was originally advertised to be.