Tesla Bots May Develop ‘Unique Personalities’ & Be Companions, Says Elon Musk
In August, during Tesla’s AI Day event, founder and CEO Elon Musk introduced the world to the ‘Tesla Bot’.
This “general purpose, bi-pedal, humanoid” robot would be suited to completing mundane, repetitive tasks, Musk explained, and it could be built to help ease the labor shortage.
Since then, not much else has been announced about it, and it’s presumed that the design team is working behind the scenes to develop it further.
However, when asked about plans for the bot on the Lex Fridman podcast, a series self-described as “conversations about the nature of intelligence, consciousness, love, and power,” Musk shared that he thought the Tesla Bot could evolve into something more than just a monotonous worker, devoid of emotion.
“It’s not quite in Tesla’s primary mission directive of accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy, but it’s an extremely useful thing for the world to make a humanoid robot that is capable of interacting with the world and helping in many different ways,” he stated.
Perhaps one of these ways is emotional labor, on top of the factory labor it was intended for.
Per Musk, this bot could develop a “unique” personality over time. “It’s not like all the robots are the same. That personality could evolve to match the owner, or whatever you want to call it.”
Um, but what if the owner isn’t a generally very nice person? Combined with Musk’s promise that humans are still fast enough to outrun the bot if the need should arise, this doesn’t seem like the most reassuring direction the AI could take.
But the bot’s primary focus is still work, according to the multi-company CEO. Even if it turns out to be somewhat of an “incredible buddy,” likened to the Star Wars franchise’s lovable C3PO and R2D2. Or something else. Who knows?
