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Elon Musk Has No Idea What He’s Doing with Tesla Bot
- cyberpsybin 5y agoElon Musk is the next level of con men
- 411111111111111 5y agoDangerous comment on HN, ta lot of people here see him as tony stark in the flesh. They really do love their heroes and usually don't let reality get in their way of worship
- dang 5y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26528522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26528522 (March 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17709543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17709543 (Aug 2018) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17512473 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17512473 (July 2018) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17502225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17502225 (July 2018)
- 411111111111111 5y agoEven after thinking on it for a day I still cannot see how this comment of mine was in any way a personal attack or "Musk hate". It wasn't a good comment as I didn't even try to make an argument, so the downvotes are definitely deserved but I cannot comprehend why it received a warning for said reasons. I'm neither attacking anyone personally nor do I say anything bad about Musk. I'm only pointing out that there are people around that literally worship him. That is not an opinion but a fact. Do you want me to link to content of that nature?
- dang 5y ago"a lot of people here see him as tony stark in the flesh" is a caricature, not a "fact", and clearly positions you on one side of the $celeb wars. "They really do love their heroes", "don't let reality get in their way", and "worship" is all just name-calling designed to put down the other side—also not "fact", and definitely more $celeb war. Other than that, there was literally nothing in your comment.
- 411111111111111 5y agoif the other side is people worshiping a human man, then yes - I'm "name-calling" them to do exactly this. I'm only acknowledging in my comment that there are participants to what you call a $celeb war, which see a pretty successful entrepreneur as something to be worshiped - which in my mind is always and in all situations an unhealthy view of any individual, no matter what they've set out to do or accomplished. But this forum is obviously your community to do with as you please and it seems I've overstayed my welcome.
- fsloth 5y agoOveroptimistic perhaps. And sweeps audiences in his techno-optimism. I would not call him a con-man as such. He has expanded Tesla to a known brand with facilities around the globe and an orbital launch company. Con-men do not create companies that push payload to orbit. "A highly unreliable predictor of actual future features" would be a better characterization IMO.
- GDC7 5y agoStill can't be compared to Bezos, Gates, Brin&Page, Benioff, Ellison etc. They are done. They founded the thing, grew it, nurtured it and now they left and the respective companies are still dominating. Musk can't leave because his companies depend on him being there and pulling this sort of things. People call him a con-man because he never really delivered anything financially sustainable before moving onto the next shiny thing. It's not like he's media shy and needs to operate under the Tesla umbrella , like Page&Brin or Buffett need the Google/Berkshire umbrella respectively. If you go by the fundamentals of the automotive market Tesla should be the American answer to Porsche or Ferrari, only totally electric. An honest 50B dollar car company. All the extra is speculation (both technical and financial/marketcap-wise) and although speculating is fair game, it's not intellectually fair to list those things under Musk accomplishments , that is because they just aren't accomplished yet, they are POC at best and the judge is still out on whether they are even valid POC. The paper wealth and the market cap can go as fast as it came for Tesla and Musk, and then all the people who are adoring him will start doubting and second guessing his decisons. Nobody is second guessing Bill Gates deciding to go fully GUI with Windows 95, or Bezos opting to invest heavily in the cloud anymore. It's now clear as the sky that those were brilliant decisions.
- elurg 5y agoMajor chunks of Tesla and SpaceX are already profitable businesses selling competitive products. They don't need hype to be profitable. The fact that they're still investing in future products doesn't seem like much of a criticism.
- fsloth 5y agoWe weren't discussing who is the greatest industrialist of all time, just establishing Mr. Musk is not a con-man. Quite different topics I think...
- rossmohax 5y agoMore like Howard Hughes. There'll be movie about him for sure.
- inglor_cz 5y agoFrom the essay of Paul Graham "Haters" (http://paulgraham.com/fh.html http://paulgraham.com/fh.html): That word "fraud" is an important one. It's the spectral signature of a hater to regard the object of their hatred as a fraud. They can't deny their fame. Indeed, their fame is if anything exaggerated in the hater's mind. They notice every mention of the singer's name, because every mention makes them angrier. In their own minds they exaggerate both the singer's fame and her lack of talent, and the only way to reconcile those two ideas is to conclude that she has tricked everyone. What sort of people become haters? Can anyone become one? I'm not sure about this, but I've noticed some patterns. Haters are generally losers in a very specific sense: although they are occasionally talented, they have never achieved much. And indeed, anyone successful enough to have achieved significant fame would be unlikely to regard another famous person as a fraud on that account, because anyone famous knows how random fame is.
- cedilla 5y agoSure. Except that frauds actually exist, not everyone accused of fraud is just a victim of envy. Its quite telling that your quote is about a singer, where talent is quite subjective. In technology, things can be a bit more objective. People who pointed out that it's physically impossible to make all the measurements from a single drop of blood Theranos claimed to make weren't haters, and people who point out the physical problems with Hyperloop and the Boring tunnels aren't "haters" either. Also, it might be worth remembering that whatever else Musk is, he is also a fraudster. He intentionally lied, more than once, about the liquidity of Tesla, the product Tesla will deliver in the short term, and don't forget about the time where he told the public that Tesla was going public at $420 per share.
- dang 5y agoPlease don't post dumb dismissals like this, which are the mirror image of the thing they're arguing with. It's against the site guidelines and oh-so-tedious. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26528522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26528522 (March 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17709543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17709543 (Aug 2018) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17512473 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17512473 (July 2018) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17502225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17502225 (July 2018) Edit: would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments generally? You've unfortunately done a lot of that and we ban that sort of account. We're trying for more thoughtful conversation here (which is also why $Celebrity wars are off topic.)
- gethuen 5y agoTesla could bypass a lot by training the robots by having humans possess them and control them to train them to do simple tasks[0]. Easy data. https://japantoday.com/category/tech/japanese-convenience-store-chain-begins-testing-remote-controlled-robot-staff-in-tokyo https://japantoday.com/category/tech/japanese-convenience-st...
- n9296704 5y agoLong term elderly care facility manned by Tesla Bot and Hyundai Bot team polishing Boston Dynamics's early prototypes springs immediately to mind.
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y agoSounds like a nightmare for the residents!
- JohnJamesRambo 5y agoThe part that made me guffaw the most was him saying it would respond to voice commands like a human and he already knows how since the Tesla cars are basically “sentient robots on wheels”. The Tesla voice control makes Siri look like Albert Einstein. I completely gave up on it. I don’t know what Rosetta Stone it requires to use but I wasn’t provided with it upon purchase. The best quote I found about the Tesla voice control is from Reddit- “It's almost like the dev who worked on the feature left, and nobody has taken over that duty yet.” That was two years ago.
- atonse 5y agoI laughed reading this because I agree. The voice control on the model 3 is so bad it’s insulting someone even thought to put it in.
- TheParkShark 5y agoCompared to what? Coming from anything named Toyota the Tesla voice control is light years ahead.
- cstross 5y agoOne foreseeable use: Sending astronauts to Mars surface and bringing them home is energetically horrific. It's not so much the getting to Mars orbit bit that's hard work (at least, from Earth orbit), as descending into a gravity well and then getting back out of it again. But current Mars robots have a huge control lag due to speed of light delays (up to 30 minutes between Earth/Mars, depending on where both planets are). It'd be easier to explore the surface using robots if they were controlled by astronauts in orbit -- say, in a small space station dug into the surface of Phobos or Deimos for radiation shielding. And the easiest robots for a human to control directly using a conceivable circa-2030s AR rig are either a car-like machine or a human-body-shaped machine. You could trial such a device on the Moon (as part of the Starship HLS plans NASA is currently backing for the Artemis Program), as an adjunct to actual astronauts on EVA (which is always a risky task). And the software for a human-controlled humanoid robot would be vastly easier to develop than the sort of fully autonomous control system Boston Dynamics is aiming for, hence (I suspect) Musk's over-optimistic projection. TLDR: I think Musk is trolling Boston Dynamics et al, and his real goal is something a lot more practical. (Either that or he's been hitting the magic mushrooms again.)
- elurg 5y agoDeploying robots on the moon would be extremely useful even if they have minimal autonomy and have to be remote controlled from Earth. All current efforts are rovers with scientific instruments, nobody has yet attempted to build something capable of clearing rocks for a launch pad let alone mounting solar panels. This needs to move on from research projects into actual series production.
- user-the-name 5y agoThe last thing you need for those things is humanoid robots. Especially with the 2.6 second lightspeed delay in any remote control inputs.
- CPLX 5y agoJust for reference, you’re extrapolating all the way to things like digging holes in moons of other planets from a starting point of a guy dancing around a stage in a white spandex outfit.
- elurg 5y ago> But humanoid robots are much different, and much more complicated. With rockets, well, we already had rockets. And with electric cars, we already had cars, batteries, sensors, and the DARPA competitions to build on. I don't think this line of argumentation holds up very well: we already have decades of research on humanoid robots too. They're just not good enough to be economically viable but they same could be said of electric cars and reusable rockets. Why couldn't Tesla just hire enough people to replicate the published research and then improve it? The total amount of money invested in robotics worldwide is probably not even that high. The capital required to duplicate Boston Dynamics doing parkour is probably much less that what Tesla is already investing in custom AI hardware.
- alpaca128 5y agoBut the question is, why build a humanoid robot? It's much harder to balance (especially if it should be extendable with modules), probably won't be able to handle harsher terrain than four-legged models in the foreseeable future, and I don't see how they can do tasks significantly better than a simpler model with a few robot arms. The stature isn't the main reason for the versatility of humans. I guess humanoid robots would be useful in situations where familiarity is important, but Tesla probably wants more than just a premium customer greeter with integrated voice assistant.
- scoopertrooper 5y agoOur indoor environments are built for humans. For instance, robots with wheels would struggle with stairs. Short robots would have trouble reaching up and grabbing things from shelves. Wide robots would struggle to get down narrow hallways.
- alpaca128 5y agoThe four-legged Boston Dynamics robot can walk up/down stairs, is pretty slim and has a robot arm able to reach a bit higher. And there's still a lot of room for improvement. Even humans can't always reach the highest shelves without a ladder. I'd like to see a humanoid robot successfully climb one up and down while holding an object; that alone would be an insane achievement. A good humanoid robot costs a ton, to a point where I doubt it'll see much use in normal households. I'd love to be wrong in that aspect, but I haven't yet seen an affordable robot beyond hobby project standards. Imho a humanoid body would be a nice bonus once everything else is working reliably and there's enough demand, not what I'd start out with.
- _Microft 5y agoIf I remember correctly Elon Musk actually said "We had no idea what we were doing" while talking about development of the first Dragon cargo capsule, so I guess he would be the first to admit that. That doesn't mean that they are not even going to try. You see that happening over at SpaceX with Starship development right now: start by trying a best guess ("Starhopper" was like a water tower with massive legs and an engine) and then build, test, improve, fail occassionally,...
- grecy 5y agoNobody knows for sure if Hyperloop, Self driving Teslas, Neuralink, Starship, Cybertruck, Starlink, etc. are going to work out. But we know with 100% certainty we'll never find out unless we try.
- the8472 5y agoStarhopper wasn't even the first design, before that they tried composites and had to scrap that. It really is trial and error.
- 0x_rs 5y ago>With rockets, well, we already had rockets. The author uses naivety, but this statement is very questionable to anyone interested in spaceflight. No, "we" didn't have any vertically landing reusable rocket capable of autonomous reentry, except one primitive atmospheric demo vehicle with manual primary controls. Let alone engines such as Raptors in the western world. Anyhow, the presentation itself didn't seem to take itself very seriously, so I wouldn't think too much about the (very difficult) feasibleness of this, they must be aware. Hell, it may just be an elaborate advertisement for jobs.
- ALittleLight 5y agoI like Elon Musk even though I have no expectation that this will work. I like that he is willing to try. Most billionaires in the world are incredibly boring. They just keep doing what they've been doing trying to earn more money. Elon Musk is a style of billionaire that other billionaires should aspire to - "I guess we'll try to make humanoid robots now." Maybe if they could get it to a reasonable price point and get it to follow someone they could sell some of these as novelty type thing.
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago"That will never work" is probably what has been said the most about Musk projects.
- cinntaile 5y agoWe're still waiting for Automatic Self Drive, not long ago he acknowledged it's harder than he thought it would be. Musk is a good marketeer though, he knows how to make headlines. A Tesla Bot will also likely be harder than he expected.
- alpaca128 5y agoIt's also correct a lot of the time. Hyperloop didn't work out and the remaining related projects are looking more and more like scams. In the last few years no noteworthy progress has been made and even the most basic questions haven't ever been answered. The Boring Company, which ripped off the original The Boring Company, has one finished project which didn't get close to the original vision and cost enough that further projects were put on hold. Neuralink is cool but Musk made some really wild claims in their name without much to back them up. SpaceX and Tesla do some amazing stuff and hopefully they keep being successful. But that doesn't say anything about the rest.
- bbarnett 5y agoBoring corp, modified, will be immensely valuable on Mars, for digging habitats / etc.
- elurg 5y agoMany of those side bets that "don't work yet" are much newer than Tesla and SpaceX and have had much less effort put into them. Claims that "they will never work" are predicting the future based mostly on personal biases. For example Hyperloop is just a concept that other people are trying to implement with very limited resources.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago"Claims that "they will never work" are predicting the future based mostly on personal biases." No, there are transport and contruction proffeshionals explaining that economics of the Hyperloop cannot work, it requires more effort to build and has 100x less capacity and worse safety than any bullet train. The Boring Company doesn't even make sence, how are they making tonnels cheaper? Have they achieved anything at all? There is no 'core of innovation' behind it
- hughrr 5y agoExtrapolating my father's Model S purchase into this domain: "look I spent $50k on this android - it makes fart noises and tries to jump off the pavement into a bush every few days"
- thrownaway810 5y agoI wasn’t sold before, but I think you’ve just sold me on it.
- jbverschoor 5y agoWell, you gotta start somewhere. I'm getting tired of people dismissing any effort of changing the world. These are the same people that were laughing at him when he launched tesla. The same people whole said Apple was doomed, because they only had a smartphone. Etc. etc. etc.
- croes 5y agoAnd some were laughing as he announced full autonomous driving next year ... five years ago. Or lets talk about his Mars settlement. There a things that are realistic but people thought it's too expensive or too niche and there are things that sound like straight out of science fiction. Musk is good in the former and not so good in the latter.
- user-the-name 5y agoWhy do you act like we have not already started? You are making the exact same dismissive mistake Elon is making: Just ignoring the existing work, or assuming it is somehow just shoddy.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago"I'm getting tired of people dismissing any effort of changing the world." I am getting tired of people praising Elon joke projects as world-changing. Its a voice assistant, we already have them, there is nothong world changing. Also Hyperloop is and Boring company are pretty useless, and are likely to stay that way - passenger capacity of every hyperloop design and of the tonnela are pethetic compared to a normal train
- onethought 5y agoI note your omitting: falcon9, starlink, model3, and powerwall from your assessment that Elon’s ideas aren’t world changing.
- Traster 5y agoI think it's just lazy to dismiss everyone's criticism as one thing. Sure, there are idiots out on the internet who are going to crap all over what anyone does for literally any reason. However, the people are criticising are actual people and they do actually have arguments that you should think about. Some of those arguments are bad, but a lot of them aren't. When Elon Musk decided he was going to revolutionize travel with the Boring company a load of experts in town planning and infrastructure came out and said - "Hey, we're experts, we understand this problem, you aren't even solving the right problem" and so far, they seem basically correct. The boring company could completely succeed at its goal, and it wouldn't matter. There are going to be lightweight criticisms of this concept (Musk invites those by making someone dress up in a morph suit and dance like a robot). But there are also going to be more realistic criticisms such as the fact that whilst Humanoid robots have remained science fiction, non-humanoid robots have proliferated massively across industries that were previously fully manual. It'd be great if we could build a humanoid robot to replace all those humans trudging around Amazon fulfillment centres- but we don't need to, because those robots have no reason to be humanoid in the first place. I'm tired of people pretending that just the aspiration to change the world excuses you from real criticism of your ideas. There are plenty of people out there changing the world- some of them mentioned in the article, and those people actually thought out what they were doing before getting a guy in a morph suit to dance in front of the worlds press. Let's not forget, we're still waiting for the autonomous driving promises Musk has failed to deliver on for years now.
- remorses 5y agoI think Elon Musk is exploring new stuff to do at Tesla to keep talented AI people in the company and not make them go away and search for new exciting problems to solve. Even if the robot will never be real, he can keep these people excited and maybe gather new talent
- tim333 5y agoAlso it's kind of an interesting project that can probably be worked on at fairly low cost given it uses the car hardware. I get the impression it's more a case of let's see if we can hack this stuff into a bot rather than a commercial plan.
- fighterpilot 5y agoWhat will the Bot be used for? I can see why it'll be useful in the future when we have AGI. But until then, I don't see what advantage it'll have over things built specifically for a particular job, which is already hard enough to achieve.
- elurg 5y agoNot clear that hammering nails or digging holes in the ground requires AGI.
- MauranKilom 5y agoYou'd be surprised how much "deal with unpredicted stuff" construction work entails. Indeed, robots already can hammer nails into walls. Or dig holes. But we still pay construction workers to do these things (well, usually operating tools/machines - but we decidedly don't let those devices operate themselves). And it turns out that the results of them following orders too literally (like a robot would) tends to lead to funny (or tragic) videos clips. See also this recent HN article, which discusses (the failures of) automating a much more restricted task in a seemingly straightforward domain: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28054606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28054606
- drclau 5y agoOne thing is certain: it can’t (yet) be used as a firefighter. That is, if it shares the AI stack with Tesla AP.
- clifdweller 5y agoI wouldn't be surprised if they get to the point of go get me an X from the fridge in a year but really the tipping point of usefulness will be go make me some properly seasoned scrambled eggs. Very few jobs are constrained to just go get x or help move Y so they will run into same problem as other current robot companies finding a customer. Spot is quite capable yet amazon hasn't replaced its pickers with it so what is the key feature musk needs to implement?
- JoshTko 5y agoI think the title is spot on, but I also think you need to add this to the title: "...but Elon will figure out faster than anyone else"