Hey everybody, welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast.
This is a show where we discuss the critical crossroads, the
shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company and Neurolink.
I'm your host Will Walden. Tesla quietly revealed a new
generation prototype of its Optimus robot, and this one is
powered by Crock, the in house AI from XAI.
Now, the reveal wasn't part of some flashy thing that Elon Musk
did on stage and brought out a robot.
No, not at all. Came from a brief clip tucked
inside a recruitment video posted on X.
The footage shows a redesigned robot moving with noticeably
improved balance and dexterity, assembling parts in what looks
like a mock factory setting. The timing of this update raises
a question. How close is Tesla to turning
Optimus from a lab project into a real product that everybody
could buy? Now let's talk about the video a
little bit. This shows the new Optimus using
both arms to pick up wires and insert them into a board with
stable, repeatable motion. Never been done with Optimus.
The entire motion sequence lasts just a few seconds, but it
demonstrates something important.
Tesla is moving away from choreographed robot stunts.
No backflips or anything weird like that.
And they're not trying to run up dirty hills.
They're just doing things that are practical.
You know, they're focusing on task automation that aligns with
its manufacturing prowess in the future.
So first and foremost, Optimus is going to be a production
robot manufacturing 100% going into factories.
That's exactly what's going to happen.
Enterprise companies, big corporations will be using Tesla
bots for that first. And then once that's proven and
once it can achieve those tasks repeatedly, Elon and Tesla will
of course, optimize Optimist for us.
So it'll be able to do your dishes, it'll be able to mow
your lawn. It'll be able to, I don't know,
make your baby burp, Pat, it's back and make, I don't know,
Optimist is pretty optimistic those things.
So they confirm, Tesla confirmed that this version of Optimist
runs on Grok. It's a huge shift.
The original robot operated using custom software built in
house with limited natural language integration.
And by switching to Grok, Tesla gains access to a language model
that can parse instructions, adjust to variable tasks, and
potentially train itself on new workflows with fewer hard coded
commands. Makes the robot very, very
useful. The use of Croc also hints at a
longer term plan to unify Tesla's robotics software and AI
stack. This goes into SpaceX as well.
These robots will land on Mars. If Croc powers Optimus Autopilot
and the user interface inside Tesla's vehicles, then Tesla's
future AI models won't just answer your questions.
They're going to be part of physical systems.
This is what makes Optimist better than other bots out
there. It's a competitive advantage no
other company or robotics lab has right now.
Tesla's new footage didn't show Optimist doing high speed
walking or climbing stairs this time, but that's not the point
of this video. The video focuses on fine motor
skills that matter most inside a factory and inside your homes.
The robot doesn't need to run. It doesn't need to lift things,
it needs to connect, hold and repeat the actions without
missing a beat. It can just do the things.
If they can do that consistently, it could reduce
labor costs across Tesla's production lines and set a
precedent for robotic integration in a high volume
manufacturing. Now think about that for a
second. They replace everybody on their
staff that's doing these physical labor tasks, these
complex, dexterous tasks, things that you have to manipulate with
your fingers, adding insulation, adding a wiring, things like
that that you have to do to a car to manufacture it.
Those people are going to be fired.
Elon is actually building the replacement for the people in
the Tesla factories. Sure, there will be some people
left, of course, but automation is important to auto
manufacturing. And of course Elon wants to cut
costs. Why would you pay people when
you could just build a robot that's going to be able to
manufacture something 24/7? People have to take lunch
breaks. People have to go to the
bathroom. People have to have meetings,
you know, and there has to be safety meetings in the mornings.
And everybody has to do human things.
I mean, you might get a phone call in the middle of the day,
your kids sick, you got to go pick him up from school.
That person is gone for the day. So instead of that person
leaving for the day, Elon wants to replace it with an optimist
robot. This is what's happening.
This is exactly what's happening.
And you know as well as I do this workforce, once it's gone,
the Tesla stock price will shoot through the atmosphere to the
moon, to Mars and beyond. It's going to ride a Starship
into the heavens. And the stock price, get it now.
Get the stock now. Because once these people are
replaced, Oh my Lord, they're going to save so much money.
And with that, investors are going to go wild.
So this is this is important. The timing of this update also
lines up with Musk's recent statements about optimist
reaching commercial readiness in 2025.
He's talked about this before. They've already done internal
testing of optimistic gigafactories.
You haven't said which ones they've done or what task is
actually doing, but it's working on it.
Tesla employees have repeatedly been using the robot and
simulated environments to evaluate how it performs under
factory conditions. So think about this.
I was in this situation before where you replace yourself with
somebody that you train, you train them on the skill that you
know, and you're the only person that knows that skill in that
job. And they brought somebody in and
under the the guys that you will be training them to help you.
What you're actually doing is training somebody who gets paid
less than you to replace you. This happened to be and it was
hilarious. I already had another job lined
up. I didn't like that job.
So I was out anyway. So what I did was train somebody
to replace me, not knowing that they were going to replace me.
I thought I still had, you know, maybe like, I, I could have
stayed there for as long as I wanted to, as long as I didn't
replace this person. But I cost the money.
I cost the company too much money, apparently.
And that's exactly what they're doing with these robots.
These people. The employees have been using
the robot and simulated environments to evaluate how it
performs under factory conditions.
In a factory. If you're training a robot to do
jobs that humans do, those human jobs are going to be gone in a
few years. I give it five years.
Every humans going to be gone from a Tesla factory, Every
single person using Grok, you know, they have vision language
models, they can interpret voice commands, but also images and
schematics. Now it changes how a robot
understands tasks. Instead of needing line by line
instructions, you could just read it.
Optimist reads these things. They read a wiring diagram or
watch a human do a task and they remember.
They learn. Then they can try to replicate
it. This changes the ceiling of what
general purpose robotics can accomplish, especially when
paired with Tesla's vertically integrated design.
Everything is made by Tesla. So optimist, you know it was.
People were skeptic because Elon was overhyping it over promising
timelines, and the bot was a person in a spandex suit in the
first presentation. Remember that?
That was pretty funny. Everyone was like, hey, that's a
guy. But two years later, the company
is showing a robot that can do real work with his hands.
Hands are the hardest part of a robot.
Think about how many bones you have in your hands, what you do
with your hands. It's very complex.
Same with your feet. Your feet have so many bones in
them. Very complex.
Now, a robot doesn't really have to move a lot usually.
And if there's a a way for the robot to maneuver itself better
than a human does, then that's even better for Elon and Tesla
because the robot will be moving faster and in better positions
than a human does. Humans get confused.
You know, there's five people in front of you.
What do you do when you go around them or you ask them,
hey, excuse me, can I come through, please?
And then the, you know, they might spread out, but a Tesla
bot, they'll have patterns that they can use all through the day
so nobody gets stuck. There's no stoppage, no
slowdowns. And the use of Grok acts as a
public test bed for XA is models now.
Training a robot on Grok creates a feedback loop that can refine
Grok. So the machine is learning
people. Tesla has already merged XAI&X
Corp into the same parent company.
Bending the same AI powering tweets could now power robots to
build cars. Crazy data to model to machine.
This is insane system level AI integration that Musk has talked
about for years now. Tesla hasn't actually said when
the next optimist prototype will be shown.
Again, this is just a one off and it's not even a thing that
Tesla did or if it even plans a public demonstration for this.
But the company is a pattern of free using the short controlled
releases to test responses and also they use it to recruit
people. If you see a cool project that
you want to work on, of course you're going to apply to that
thing. You know, I've applied to so
many jobs that I wanted to be part of this crazy team that's
going on, you know, this crazy project because I want to build
something that's interesting to me.
And if you're a robotics person or you're an AI person and you
see Grok and Optimist working together a full AI suite inside
of a robot body, which is also connected to the cloud.
Oh my God, I think this is Terminator.
I think Elon is building Terminator right now.
Cyberdyne Systems I yeah, it's it's all coming to fruition.
You know, we, we think it's going to be the end of humanity
with these robots. But in all actuality, this
utopian world that they promise us isn't actually going to be a
utopian world. People will be losing their
jobs. And I'm an optimist.
I'm just also a realist. I want these things to happen.
I want the Optimist robot to be part of everybody's life.
I could use a robot. I mean, my kid talks to Alexa to
brush his teeth, right? And he asks Alexa to play a
song, and then he brushes his teeth along with a song.
And then he'll say, thank you, Alexa, stop, please.
And then Alexa will stop. And then he might ask Alexa a
question, which to me is really intriguing, right?
He might ask Alexa, you know, something that you know
something about wherever or whatever, like a monkey that he
saw on his mom's phone or something might ask a question
about them. Or he might just start talking
to it. And I'm like, buddy, you know,
that's not a real thing, right? So he knows that it's not a real
person, but it's an interesting thing, right?
I used to play with toys that would talk and it's similar to
that when I I had a little robot when I was a kid and it would
say certain phrases. Then I talk back to it because
you know, that's what you do when you're a little kid.
You just find ways to express yourself.
And when he's talking to Alexa, this is exactly the kind of
project that Optimus is. Optimus is a robot that's using
language to build robots that use the same language to build
more robots and then to build things and to do things around
your house. What if, and I know we already
have robot lawn mowers, but what if we had a robot groundskeeper?
They could trim the hedges, They could, you know, they could
sweep, they could mop, they could mow your lawn.
Of course, they could fix bricks that are broken and you're in
your fire pit or something like that.
You know what if it's something like that where they just
optimize your life, Optimus optimizes your life.
And of course you're not going to buy it outright.
You're going to have to rent it because why would you not have a
subscription for an Optimus robot unless you buy the robot
and then you have subscription for the AI, for the use of the
robot. You buy the hardware and then
you have a subscription for the robot, which is going to be
wild. But you know, yeah, upgrade
packages sort of like Tesla, you know, you can upgrade your
upgrade your package for a car. So it'll be similar, similar to
that for Grok. Like you could have Grok and
Optimus. You can have an Optimus robot
that does things in the house. Then you upgrade your package to
the whole house where it fixes things and handyman kind of
stuff. You know, maybe if your sink
breaks, you could be, hey Optimist, you know, sink is
broken. Can you see what's wrong with
it? Try to fix it.
Send your robot in there before you hire a plumber, before you
hire, before you even call a plumber.
Optimist could go in there and take a look.
So not only is Optimist going to, and I've tried to be bleak,
I'm just trying to say things that are going to happen.
What happens, though, when Optimist does eventually take
over those kind of jobs, a skilled labor jobs, that's going
to be wild. It's going to be interesting in
the next 20 years what's going to happen with robotics, because
we're at a point now with AI and robotics.
If we can get to AGI and these robots can think for themselves
and just do things that need to be done around the house, maybe
everybody's going to be, you know, you have a task force of
five people to build an addition to your house and why do you
need a, you know, why do you need a Carpenter anymore?
You don't, if optimist can swing a hammer, you know, it's going
to be wild. It's going to be wild.
I can't wait for it, but also I'm, I'm, I'm skeptical, but
also optimistic about it. It's going to be interesting.
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