I’ll never forget my feeling when I, Robot came out—checks IMDB, oh my God—20 years ago. The thought of life-like robots taking over the world was terrifying.
Two decades later, that revolution feels like it’s starting to shape, thanks to Tesla’s new Optimus robotos. This Transformers-sounding machine is about as lifelike as I’ve ever seen. There’s a viral clip going around from Tesla’s recent “We, Robot” event of a human interacting with one, and boy, is it jarring.
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In the video, a man named John is talking to Optimus as if it is another person. The conversation is pretty smooth, pretty natural: Tesla Optimus turns its head and acknowledges him, and it has an eerie ability to invoke inflection in its tone. Its body gestures seem more “human” than some people I’ve attempted to converse with in real life.
At one point, John asks it what the hardest thing about being a robot is.
“Trying to learn how to be as human as you guys are,” Tesla Optimus responded.
Kinda terrifying!
The rapper 2 Chainz was there, too, and had his own conversation. They talked about basketball—the robot said it couldn’t shoot jump shots yet—and 2 Chainz offered to buy it a Balenciaga outfit.
Elon Musk has a tendency to overstate the readiness of Tesla’s technologies, so his claims that it could eventually perform tasks like teaching, babysitting, and dog walking are still probably pretty far off. But how far off, really?
The Tesla Optimus model was announced in 2021 and first brought to life in 2022 with a prototype. The robot stands 5-foot-8 and performs functions that any one of us can do. If anyone wants to purchase one, eventually, it’s expected to cost between $20,000-30,000.
Apparently, we learned nothing from I, Robot.
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