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Comment by smeeth

6 hours ago

I always understood this to be why Tesla started working on humanoid robots

Pretty much. They banked on "if we can solve FSD, we can partially solve humanoid robot autonomy, because both are robots operating in poorly structured real world environments".

I don't want a humanoid robot. I want a purpose built robot.

  • Obviously both will exist and compete with each other on the margins. The thing to appreciate is that our physical world is already built like an API for adult humans. Swinging doors, stairs, cupboards, benchtops. If you want a robot to traverse the space and be useful for more than one task, the humanoid form makes sense.

    The key question is whether general purpose robots can outcompete on sheer economies of scale alone.

They started working on humanoid robots because Musk always has to have the next moonshot, trillion-dollar idea to promise "in 3 years" to keep the stock price high.

As soon as Waymo's massive robotaxi lead became undeniable, he pivoted to from robotaxis to humanoid robots.

It's so they can stick a Tesla logo on a bunch of chinese tech and call it innovation.