There might be no bigger fan of robots on the planet than Elon Musk. He’s working on a humanoid prototype right now called Optimus. He shows it off about once a year, and when he did it this week at Tesla’s Investor Day he made a very bold prediction that is hard to wrap your head around.
Musk believes that in the future, humanoid robots could outnumber humans. At last check, there are 7-plus billion two-legged human beings running around the planet. That’s a lot of robots.
Here’s part of what Musk said this week.
“You could sort of see a home use for robots, certainly industrial uses for robots, humanoid robots. I think we might exceed a one-to-one ratio of humanoid robots to humans. It’s not even clear what an economy is at that point.”
We’re a long way from that prediction coming true. Optimus has a ways to go. Last year, during its debut on stage, it was actually a human in a robot suit. This year Optimus was shown through videos only.
Once robots begin to be integrated at a large scale, you can see how they could revolutionize manufacturing and other industries. Companies need help to hire human factory workers, and robots can solve many problems. For one thing, they don’t form unions, demand to work from home, or quit their job because of too few perks.
There is record demand for automation in factories, but those aren’t the only jobs that could be in jeopardy for humans. A Yahoo story quotes IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, who said that he thinks white-collar clerical jobs could be replaced by artificial intelligence. He also thinks robots could help fill labor shortages across multiple industries.
But Musk is still fearful of the dark side of A.I.
“It’s quite dangerous technology. I fear I may have done some things to accelerate it,”
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