During Tesla’s AI day in Palo Alto, Elon Musk presented Optimus, a humanoid robot which can perform all kind of different tasks as a result of the artificial intelligence embedded in the robot. During the presentation Musk showed how the Optimus could take over simple daily task such as watering your plants. During the presentation, Musk stated that these robots could end poverty by taking over all hard work normally executed by humans (Knight, 2022). Although, one might wonder is this actually possible? Although it seems the robotic can perform basic tasks, still a substantial amount of work is needed to make the Optimus more stable and better in performing its tasks and being able to do all kind of factory work. As Musk joked: we just let the robot do extremely simple tasks because we are afraid it will fall when we let it do more complicated tasks. According to Musk these robots could do all hard labor that normally humans will do and therefore humans will not have to work anymore, and humans can enjoy the benefits (NDTV.com, 2022). However, a lot of work must be done before society is ready for robots to take over all its work. In addition, there is a safety aspect involved with letting robots do all the work and the use extremely sophisticated AI for these robots. Because these robots will get smarter every day which might be a dangerous thing. Lastly, our whole society would need to be redesigned. For example, the economic system would have to be completely redesigned since people will not have salaries anymore so, who is going to give people money so that they can buy items they need? Personally, I think it would be possible that AI and robotics could end poverty by taking on all the hard work and distribute the benefits equally amongst all people in the world. However, we are not there yet and not only engineers need to improve their robots, but also governments need to think about how to redesign society and divide the benefits among humans before robotics can end poverty for all. Therefore, I do not think it is that naturally that AI and Humanoid can end poverty as simple as Elon Musk makes it look due to the fact there are more factors to it than just the technical part.
Sources:
Knight, W. (2022). Elon Musk’s Half-Baked Robot Is a Clunky First Step. Retrieved 5 October 2022, from https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musks-half-baked-robot-is-a-clunky-first-step/
Optimus Could Eliminate Poverty: Elon Musk On Humanoid Robot. (2022). Retrieved 5 October 2022, from https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/optimus-could-eliminate-poverty-elon-musk-on-humanoid-robot-3394317
