Hey everybody, welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast. This is a show where we discuss the critical crossroads, the shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company and Neurolink. I'm your host Will Walden. Tesla quietly revealed a new generation prototype of its Optimus robot, and this one is powered by Crock, the in house AI from XAI. Now, the reveal wasn't part of some flashy thing that Elon Musk did on stage and brought out a robot.
No, not at all. Came from a brief clip tucked inside a recruitment video posted on X. The footage shows a redesigned robot moving with noticeably improved balance and dexterity, assembling parts in what looks like a mock factory setting. The timing of this update raises a question. How close is Tesla to turning Optimus from a lab project into a real product that everybody could buy? Now let's talk about the video a
little bit. This shows the new Optimus using both arms to pick up wires and insert them into a board with stable, repeatable motion. Never been done with Optimus. The entire motion sequence lasts just a few seconds, but it demonstrates something important. Tesla is moving away from choreographed robot stunts. No backflips or anything weird like that. And they're not trying to run up dirty hills. They're just doing things that are practical.
You know, they're focusing on task automation that aligns with its manufacturing prowess in the future. So first and foremost, Optimus is going to be a production robot manufacturing 100% going into factories. That's exactly what's going to happen. Enterprise companies, big corporations will be using Tesla bots for that first. And then once that's proven and once it can achieve those tasks repeatedly, Elon and Tesla will of course, optimize Optimist for us.
So it'll be able to do your dishes, it'll be able to mow your lawn. It'll be able to, I don't know, make your baby burp, Pat, it's back and make, I don't know, Optimist is pretty optimistic those things. So they confirm, Tesla confirmed that this version of Optimist runs on Grok. It's a huge shift. The original robot operated using custom software built in house with limited natural language integration.
And by switching to Grok, Tesla gains access to a language model that can parse instructions, adjust to variable tasks, and potentially train itself on new workflows with fewer hard coded commands. Makes the robot very, very useful. The use of Croc also hints at a longer term plan to unify Tesla's robotics software and AI stack. This goes into SpaceX as well.
These robots will land on Mars. If Croc powers Optimus Autopilot and the user interface inside Tesla's vehicles, then Tesla's future AI models won't just answer your questions. They're going to be part of physical systems. This is what makes Optimist better than other bots out there. It's a competitive advantage no other company or robotics lab has right now. Tesla's new footage didn't show Optimist doing high speed walking or climbing stairs this time, but that's not the point
of this video. The video focuses on fine motor skills that matter most inside a factory and inside your homes. The robot doesn't need to run. It doesn't need to lift things, it needs to connect, hold and repeat the actions without missing a beat. It can just do the things. If they can do that consistently, it could reduce labor costs across Tesla's production lines and set a precedent for robotic integration in a high volume manufacturing. Now think about that for a
second. They replace everybody on their staff that's doing these physical labor tasks, these complex, dexterous tasks, things that you have to manipulate with your fingers, adding insulation, adding a wiring, things like that that you have to do to a car to manufacture it. Those people are going to be fired. Elon is actually building the replacement for the people in the Tesla factories. Sure, there will be some people left, of course, but automation is important to auto
manufacturing. And of course Elon wants to cut costs. Why would you pay people when you could just build a robot that's going to be able to manufacture something 24/7? People have to take lunch breaks. People have to go to the bathroom. People have to have meetings, you know, and there has to be safety meetings in the mornings. And everybody has to do human things. I mean, you might get a phone call in the middle of the day, your kids sick, you got to go pick him up from school.
That person is gone for the day. So instead of that person leaving for the day, Elon wants to replace it with an optimist robot. This is what's happening. This is exactly what's happening. And you know as well as I do this workforce, once it's gone, the Tesla stock price will shoot through the atmosphere to the moon, to Mars and beyond. It's going to ride a Starship into the heavens. And the stock price, get it now.
Get the stock now. Because once these people are replaced, Oh my Lord, they're going to save so much money. And with that, investors are going to go wild. So this is this is important. The timing of this update also lines up with Musk's recent statements about optimist reaching commercial readiness in 2025. He's talked about this before. They've already done internal testing of optimistic gigafactories.
You haven't said which ones they've done or what task is actually doing, but it's working on it. Tesla employees have repeatedly been using the robot and simulated environments to evaluate how it performs under factory conditions. So think about this. I was in this situation before where you replace yourself with somebody that you train, you train them on the skill that you know, and you're the only person that knows that skill in that
job. And they brought somebody in and under the the guys that you will be training them to help you. What you're actually doing is training somebody who gets paid less than you to replace you. This happened to be and it was hilarious. I already had another job lined up. I didn't like that job. So I was out anyway. So what I did was train somebody to replace me, not knowing that they were going to replace me.
I thought I still had, you know, maybe like, I, I could have stayed there for as long as I wanted to, as long as I didn't replace this person. But I cost the money. I cost the company too much money, apparently. And that's exactly what they're doing with these robots. These people. The employees have been using the robot and simulated environments to evaluate how it performs under factory conditions.
In a factory. If you're training a robot to do jobs that humans do, those human jobs are going to be gone in a few years. I give it five years. Every humans going to be gone from a Tesla factory, Every single person using Grok, you know, they have vision language models, they can interpret voice commands, but also images and schematics. Now it changes how a robot understands tasks. Instead of needing line by line instructions, you could just read it.
Optimist reads these things. They read a wiring diagram or watch a human do a task and they remember. They learn. Then they can try to replicate it. This changes the ceiling of what general purpose robotics can accomplish, especially when paired with Tesla's vertically integrated design. Everything is made by Tesla. So optimist, you know it was. People were skeptic because Elon was overhyping it over promising timelines, and the bot was a person in a spandex suit in the
first presentation. Remember that? That was pretty funny. Everyone was like, hey, that's a guy. But two years later, the company is showing a robot that can do real work with his hands. Hands are the hardest part of a robot. Think about how many bones you have in your hands, what you do with your hands. It's very complex. Same with your feet. Your feet have so many bones in them. Very complex. Now, a robot doesn't really have to move a lot usually.
And if there's a a way for the robot to maneuver itself better than a human does, then that's even better for Elon and Tesla because the robot will be moving faster and in better positions than a human does. Humans get confused. You know, there's five people in front of you. What do you do when you go around them or you ask them, hey, excuse me, can I come through, please?
And then the, you know, they might spread out, but a Tesla bot, they'll have patterns that they can use all through the day so nobody gets stuck. There's no stoppage, no slowdowns. And the use of Grok acts as a public test bed for XA is models now. Training a robot on Grok creates a feedback loop that can refine Grok. So the machine is learning people. Tesla has already merged XAI&X Corp into the same parent company. Bending the same AI powering tweets could now power robots to
build cars. Crazy data to model to machine. This is insane system level AI integration that Musk has talked about for years now. Tesla hasn't actually said when the next optimist prototype will be shown. Again, this is just a one off and it's not even a thing that Tesla did or if it even plans a public demonstration for this. But the company is a pattern of free using the short controlled releases to test responses and also they use it to recruit
people. If you see a cool project that you want to work on, of course you're going to apply to that thing. You know, I've applied to so many jobs that I wanted to be part of this crazy team that's going on, you know, this crazy project because I want to build something that's interesting to me. And if you're a robotics person or you're an AI person and you see Grok and Optimist working together a full AI suite inside of a robot body, which is also connected to the cloud.
Oh my God, I think this is Terminator. I think Elon is building Terminator right now. Cyberdyne Systems I yeah, it's it's all coming to fruition. You know, we, we think it's going to be the end of humanity with these robots. But in all actuality, this utopian world that they promise us isn't actually going to be a utopian world. People will be losing their jobs. And I'm an optimist. I'm just also a realist. I want these things to happen.
I want the Optimist robot to be part of everybody's life. I could use a robot. I mean, my kid talks to Alexa to brush his teeth, right? And he asks Alexa to play a song, and then he brushes his teeth along with a song. And then he'll say, thank you, Alexa, stop, please. And then Alexa will stop. And then he might ask Alexa a question, which to me is really intriguing, right?
He might ask Alexa, you know, something that you know something about wherever or whatever, like a monkey that he saw on his mom's phone or something might ask a question about them. Or he might just start talking to it. And I'm like, buddy, you know, that's not a real thing, right? So he knows that it's not a real person, but it's an interesting thing, right? I used to play with toys that would talk and it's similar to that when I I had a little robot when I was a kid and it would
say certain phrases. Then I talk back to it because you know, that's what you do when you're a little kid. You just find ways to express yourself. And when he's talking to Alexa, this is exactly the kind of project that Optimus is. Optimus is a robot that's using language to build robots that use the same language to build more robots and then to build things and to do things around
your house. What if, and I know we already have robot lawn mowers, but what if we had a robot groundskeeper? They could trim the hedges, They could, you know, they could sweep, they could mop, they could mow your lawn. Of course, they could fix bricks that are broken and you're in your fire pit or something like that. You know what if it's something like that where they just optimize your life, Optimus optimizes your life. And of course you're not going to buy it outright.
You're going to have to rent it because why would you not have a subscription for an Optimus robot unless you buy the robot and then you have subscription for the AI, for the use of the robot. You buy the hardware and then you have a subscription for the robot, which is going to be wild. But you know, yeah, upgrade packages sort of like Tesla, you know, you can upgrade your
upgrade your package for a car. So it'll be similar, similar to that for Grok. Like you could have Grok and Optimus. You can have an Optimus robot that does things in the house. Then you upgrade your package to the whole house where it fixes things and handyman kind of stuff. You know, maybe if your sink breaks, you could be, hey Optimist, you know, sink is broken. Can you see what's wrong with it? Try to fix it.
Send your robot in there before you hire a plumber, before you hire, before you even call a plumber. Optimist could go in there and take a look. So not only is Optimist going to, and I've tried to be bleak, I'm just trying to say things that are going to happen. What happens, though, when Optimist does eventually take over those kind of jobs, a skilled labor jobs, that's going
to be wild. It's going to be interesting in the next 20 years what's going to happen with robotics, because we're at a point now with AI and robotics. If we can get to AGI and these robots can think for themselves and just do things that need to be done around the house, maybe everybody's going to be, you know, you have a task force of five people to build an addition to your house and why do you need a, you know, why do you need a Carpenter anymore?
You don't, if optimist can swing a hammer, you know, it's going to be wild. It's going to be wild. I can't wait for it, but also I'm, I'm, I'm skeptical, but also optimistic about it. It's going to be interesting. Hey, thank you so much for listening today. I really do appreciate your support. If you could take a second and hit the subscribe or the follow button on whatever podcast platform that you're listening on right now, I greatly appreciate it.
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