In general I have been a huge proponent of the task-specific robot. Humanoids are hellishly complex. Or at least, they have been... I have been really impressed

In general I have been a huge proponent of the task-specific robot. Humanoids are hellishly complex. Or at least, they have been... I have been really impressed with Agility Robotics and their Digit robot (and Cassie before that). They make humanoids seem like a realistic thing. https://www.youtube.com/c/AgilityRobotics/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/AgilityRobotics/videos The problem with purpose-built robots is that every problem needs a team of engineers working for years to solve a single problem. Super hard! That approach is obviously going to be the best approach for a lot of problems. But recently I designed and built a robot arm. No real goal in mind I just wanted to experiment with a new planetary gear concept I had come up with so I designed a four axis robot arm with brushless motors. (no I am not looking for employment please do not ask thx) https://twitter.com/TLAlexander/status/1455320442642714625 https://twitter.com/TLAlexander/status/1455320442642714625 Once I realized I was actually going to have a robot arm of my own, I had to start thinking of what I could use it for. And you know what I realized? One robot arm can do a lot of different tasks! Maybe instead of designing a bunch of purpose built machines I should continue work on my arm and use a bunch of arms for stuff. I think over the next ten years, we will see a lot of those AI problems get solved. Probably not every AI problem, but previously difficult things will become solved problems as we saw in the last decade. I do really like Tesla's Dojo system for solving real world navigation and I think it would work well for a humanoid. We still need to solve the motivation problem, but I think we will make a lot of progress there. Companies already find lots of uses for $50k-200k robot arms, so if Tesla could produce a Digit-like Humanoid for $80k, we may find applications for them. Who thought robot dogs would have a market? In the end, you will have some classes of problems best solved by purpose built machines, and a lot of problems solved by general purpose machines like humanoids or dogs. I just think the tech is finally coming together that we've gone from "humanoids are overly complicated and can't do anything useful" to "humanoids are affordable and somewhat useful". Or rather, I think they can be somewhat useful in maybe 5 years time, in which case investing now and building the system early could potentially be smart (but still very risky) positioning for Tesla. We do know Musk likes audacious risky bets.