While about 95% of Tesla’s annual revenue can be attributed to car sales, it is essentially a robotics and artificial intelligence company, according to venture capital investor Elon Musk. However, to realize his ambitions, he must first divest another 12% of the company’s shares, says Kristjan Port in R2’s technical commentary.
Based on last year’s results, 95% of Tesla’s revenue came from automotive-related economic activities. In itself, it wouldn’t be news if one of the company’s founders and leaders, Elon Musk, was happy with it. He is undeniably a controversial and unusual person. Few can rightly say so much bad and at the same time admire the enviable success achieved under his leadership, at least in the field of automobiles and space transportation. Good and more standard by social standards business managers have not been able to do the same.
The price of Musk’s success is possible colossal bypasses from Hyperloop to Twitter. Difficult to bet on him. Watching Musk is a mixture of fearful excitement, wondering whether the next step will be a singular genius or some variant of the thousands of possible forms of mental illness.
In any case, Musk has threatened that if he is not granted more powers in the case of Tesla, the company will remain a simple car company. After that you might wonder if producing cars is the purpose of a car company. Where does Musk stand, having just issued an ultimatum demanding that he double his stake so he can have more voting rights in shaping the company with a quarter of the shares?
His ambition is to turn Tesla into more than just a car company. The company could become the world’s leading provider of artificial intelligence and robotics, Musk said. The entrepreneur added that without owning a quarter of the shares, he doesn’t feel confident enough to lead the successful automaker into a potentially even bigger business.
Humanity’s technological progress thus far may have seemed like a merry-go-round of chaotic discovery. Like one that goes round and round, carrying travelers to nowhere and filling their brief earthly episode with pleasure and nausea. Now, however, we can see increasingly clear outlines that betray the direction of the entire activity, at the end of which lies the solution to the human question.
It all started with the use of tools. Some animals tried the same, but to this day they remain stuck on branches and stones. Man learned from experience and used aids to increase the efficiency of work processes and to eliminate parts of the work. The leap in development is marked by the industrial revolution, during which tools were connected to an external energy source. Automation was then developed to make tools work independently and more. The role of the decision maker was left to the person, that is, determining what and how to do.
The aim of artificial intelligence now is to learn to make decisions on its own, reacting to both the environment and the person. Preferably by satisfying the person’s growing needs and doing it better than he himself has been able to do so far. This means that after some time artificial intelligence will inevitably be smarter than him and will no longer be understandable and manageable for humans.
Thinking this way, one may wonder why Elon Musk considers the development of the TI more valuable than cars in the long run. Sooner or later they will drive themselves, and the number of cars is relatively limited. The same goes for any TI who turns the steering wheel of a car. However, the need for a tirelessly learning technical manager doesn’t end there. People have many needs and jobs related to them.
Even if it’s folding a t-shirt. Most parents of teenage boys probably know what a challenge it is in terms of home well-being. There are many work processes that involve moving and manipulating things. Their implementation requires, in addition to the intellect capable of solving problems, skillful, vigorous and tireless management.
Recently introduced The Tesla robot makes rather graceful movements and grabs a thin-shelled egg from a box between the fingers of one hand, which it then places between the fingers of the other hand and then gently into a bowl. Monday proved it Musk posted a video of the same robot taking a T-shirt from a bin, placing it on a table, and then folding it. Teslabot did its job without questioning the need for it, at least surpassing most teenagers. The purpose of the presentation of robots is not to indicate a possible revolution in the organization of young people’s closets, but the frenetic approach of the era of rapidly learning robots.
Taking into account the current production capacity of the automotive industry, up to a few billion robot units weighing around 50 kilograms could be produced with a level of complexity similar to that of a car. Unlike humans, copying software is enough to make them intelligent. It is therefore a bigger business than cars. Some estimates put the humanoid robot market at a trillion dollars.
Now the question remains whether Elon Musk is the only dreamer of the electric man. It turns out that several entrepreneurs and investors operate with this business plan. As an interesting rumor, OpenAI is also said to have started buying several small companies involved in robotics.
Integrating, improving and possibly replacing the existing human workforce with humanoid robots could be a necessary step for the full realization of civilization or for the final solution of the human question.
From Monday to Thursday you can listen to Kristjan Port’s technological commentary on Radio 2’s “Portaal”.
2024-01-17 08:05:00
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