What the Hell is Elon Musk Talking About?
Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s director of autopilot software, elaborated that “unlike laptops and our cell phones,” self-driving cars’ computing power would be “totally under Tesla’s control. So it’s easier to distribute the workload across different nodes as opposed to asking users for permission on their own cell phones,” which Elluswamy called “very tedious.” Tesla chief financial officer Vaibhav Taneja added that capital expenditure for all that computing power in such a scenario would be “shared by the entire world, sort of everyone wants a small chunk, and they get a small profit out of it, maybe.” It wasn’t clear from the call whether only Tesla-owned-and-operated cars’ computing power would be monetized, or if vehicles owned by drivers and then rented out to the company’s “cyber cab” service would be utilized, as well.
Musk also said that Optimus, the humanoid robot Tesla has been developing, ostensibly as a means to automate factory operations, will be “more valuable than everything else combined,” seemingly in reference to the rest of Tesla’s offerings. “Because if you’ve got a sentient humanoid robots that is able to navigate reality and do tasks at request, there is no meaningful limit to the size of the economy.” The same technology, he said, could constitute a “terminator-level risk” and “follow you indoors” if “there’s not some meaningful level of influence over how that is deployed.” He said he hopes to start selling Optimus by the end of next year.
Tesla’s greatest contribution to the world, Musk said, will be “solving autonomy”—presumably by making and selling a bunch of robots. Is “autonomy” a problem that needs solving? If it were, would a flailing car company be up to the task?