Everyone & Speeding up
In one of my recent blog posts, ‘The Very Very Swift Evolution‘, I highlighted Tesla’s incredible pace in hardware development and posited that #Tesla is likely to use the software it’s developing for Full Self-Driving (FSD) as the core for the AGI powering their humanoid robots, serving as an ‘Operating System/Brain.’
Subsequently, several events have prompted me to revisit this topic.
1. #Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, in the 2024 GTC keynote, showcased not just a new version of their AI chips (Blackwell) but a complete ecosystem including a physics simulation (Isaacs Lab) and training orchestration named #Osmo, among others, under the project name ‘#gr00t’ – a general-purpose foundation model for humanoid robots.
2. Simultaneously, #Figure, a startup founded 2018, but already a unicorn, in collaboration with #OpenAI, presented this month an impressive demo where a human interacted with their first Robot ‘Figure01’ through speech. The AI, developed by OpenAI, understands language, perceives its surroundings, and can interact dynamically and meaningfully with humans and their environment.
These examples deliberately exclude the more specialized robots that are already commercially available or about to be, aimed at replacing warehouse workers, for instance, otherwise this post would get way to long. Reading about the involved companies and their financiers reveals not only #Amazon’s support for multiple projects with considerable sums, aligning with its trajectory of employing more robots than humans but also the generous backing from heavyweights like #Microsoft, #Intel, #Nvidia, #Tesla, #Apple, and more. And these are just the American projects; China is also busy building, researching, and developing, though data from China is neither reliable nor nearly complete. The only assertion I dare make is that anything in China working on #AI and #humanoid #robots, criticized by some as mere copying, is proceeding at top speed. This Chinese enthusiasm won’t deter me from later recommending how to handle this technology in conjunction with state actors; more on that later.
The breadth of support and the speed of development, now best described as a race, are unsurprising upon reflection.
Because there is the Tesla Gap, the lead Tesla has in autonomous driving. Tesla is not just the market leader at the forefront of development; no one can catch up to Tesla because simply no one else has the necessary training data to train the #AI models. Only Tesla possesses billions of kilometers of video recordings, enriched with other parameters like speed and acceleration, from cameras mounted on approximately 5 million Tesla vehicles worldwide. The lead is so significant it’s unassailable and that there is effectively no second place. It’s very likely that for the next few years, either Tesla will offer #FSD exclusively, or other automakers will have to license Tesla’s software.
3. The release of Tesla’s FSD software version 12.3, now provided to hundreds of thousands of beta testers, demonstrates capabilities comparable to a very good human driver and a very low error rate. It’s so compelling that Elon #Musk has just ordered all employees to mandatory install this version 12.3.1 on all delivered vehicles and prescribed a small test drive with this softwarefor every delivery. A brilliant marketing moves from a CEO who normally detests inefficiency. But he is, probably rightly, so convinced of the software’s efficacy that he wants every new Tesla owner to ‘experience’ the software, with an employee on board to ensure this. Musk expects a rising number of subscribers for this FSD software.
#Update: One month of “free” FSD for every Tesla owner in the USA is now offered by Tesla. Tesla is very serios about this.
No onewants to repeat this mistake, effectively conceding a trillion-dollar market, autonomous driving, Robotaxis, and delivery rides to a single company for the coming years.
The (Robotics) Market
Maybe even more import is the size of the addressable market for humanoid robots. This market is estimated to be worth about 100 trillion USD, a figure derived from the sum of the GDPs of all countries’ economies, plus a bit more.
In truth, the upper limit may only be reached when we run out of the raw materials needed to build or operate the robots, a ‘limit’ I deliberately leave open for now. Let’s just throw in ‘SpaceX at this point.
Briefly, it’s a fantastic market. Anyone who is anyone, and everyone who can, will do everything possible to carve out a share of the market for themselves, especially since the #LLM shock through #ChatGPT, the Tesla #Optimus Robot, and now Tesla’s V12.3 FSD ‘Oh Shit’ moment. To be honest, I suspect that, outside a small circle, no one is yet fully aware that Tesla has developed the next market-ready #AI product after the LLM.
If I may venture a prediction, we will see faster development and deployment of humanoid robots than even the most optimistic forecasts suggest. Where these robots will be employed, how good the ‘Software/Brain/OS’ actually is, and whether they will be commercially available in retail remain open questions. But the personal assistant for EVERYONE in embodied form is coming, and the changes that general #AI-driven humanoid robots will bring about will be as profound as those wrought by the invention of agriculture and the introduction of division of labor combined.
Security
In this context, it’s my duty to refer at least to the very basic of the security which MUST be included in this technology. I am fully aware that there is a whole philosophical discussion to be held, which I do not touch on here. First I would like to make people aware of what is coming and make them aware of the three laws formulated by Isaac Asimov in
Without claiming completeness, they are:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
State Actors
Moreover, I must emphasize that I find it indispensable to prohibit any use of this technology by state actors worldwide, or anywhere humans live.
#AI and humanoid #Robots should never fall into the hands of #governments. Total control, domination, and submission are inevitable when governments get their hands on an army of these machines. The use of general #AI and robotics by governments must be banned.
I can already hear the counterarguments:
But government X could do Y good thing with Z, and that should be banned?
Or at least: how is that going to work? The Chinese will do what they want anyway, and Russia will…. and so on…
The world has managed to forego the use of chemical and biological weapons, and the barrier to using them has been so low that they could be deployed on a large scale over 100 years ago. We prevented the spread of nuclear bombs, even if a selected few state actors posses them. We managed, thank god, to almost eradicate slavery from the face of the earth; A task we damn well should finish! History has shown we are able to act rational, once in a while, when the stakes are high enough. And we are able to act in the interest of the smallest minority there is on the planet. The individual human. I don’t see this call as a political statement but as a question of survival for humanity in general and for the individual and humanity itself. So here it goes:
#AI and humanoid #Robots should never fall into the hands of governments. Total control, domination, and submission are inevitable when governments get their hands on an army of these technologies. The use of general #AI and robotics by governments must be completely banned.
Closing
The genie is out of the bottle. Let’s wish for good for humanity and every individual. A world without #hunger, without misery, with the highest standard of #health care, and with a standard of living for every single person that we can only dream of today is within reach. Let’s prevent control and servitude enforced by millions of, literally, inhuman actors.
