Elon Musk has done it again. And by “it,” we mean tricked a lot of people with “autonomous” robots that are actually being helped by unseen human operators. And this isn’t the first time Musk has done this.
On Thursday night, Tesla threw a highly anticipated media event at Warner Bros. studios near Los Angeles and unveiled a prototype robotaxi that Musk calls the Cybercab. Consumers will have to wait on that one since Musk says it’s still 2-3 years away, just as it has been for the past decade.
But that didn’t dampen spirits at the afterparty, as people who attended the Tesla event posted dozens of videos on social media with Musk’s Optimus robots. Attendees seemed very impressed as the robots were dancing, talking, and even mixing drinks.
However, longtime tech evangelist Robert Scoble actually asked some questions to see just how autonomous these robots are. And it’s not very encouraging.
“Optimus make me a drink, please. This is not wholly AI. A human is remote assisting. Which means AI day next year where we will see how fast Optimus is learning,” Scoble tweeted along with a video.
Optimus make me a drink, please.
This is not wholly AI. A human is remote assisting.
Which means AI day next year where we will see how fast Optimus is learning. pic.twitter.com/CE2bEA2uQD
— Robert Scoble (@Scobleizer) October 11, 2024
Other users wanted to know how Scoble figured it out. The tech influencer tweeted back simply, “I asked.”
Scoble can be heard in the video asking one of the robots, “Hey Optimus, how much of you is AI?”
The robot, or whoever was controlling it, seemed to scramble for an answer, saying “I can’t disclose just how much. That’s something you’ll have to find out later.”
“But some or none?” Scoble asked with a laugh.
“I would say, it might be some. I’m not going to confirm, but it might be some,” the robot responded.
I asked. pic.twitter.com/FkgPrdRlyW
— Robert Scoble (@Scobleizer) October 11, 2024
That pretty much tells you all you need to know. If Musk had really built a bunch of robots that could interact with large crowds in real time, the robot would’ve bragged about it. Instead, the response was evasive.
Scoble made a follow-up tweet saying he talked with a Tesla engineer to get clarity.
“When it walked that is AI running Optimus. It is real impressive they brought so many out in crowds at @tesla’s event,” Scoble wrote, without elaborating further.
Plenty of people thought they were fully independent robots, interacting with humans just like other human beings. “This tech is years ahead of any competition,” one user on X wrote. The problem is, based on everything we know about Tesla’s robotics achievements, Musk is actually way behind the competition.
In fact, Musk’s competition started adding the words “no teleoperation” to their videos precisely because he got caught fudging a demonstration video back in January. The video showed Optimus folding a shirt, but eagle-eyed viewers noticed that a hand kept waving into the camera’s field of vision. There was someone just off-screen performing the task of folding and the robot mimicked the human.
As you can see in the GIF below, we’ve added a red arrow to show you where the human hand is. That technology, teleoperation, is so cutting edge that it dates to the 1940s.
But none of Musk’s magic tricks should be surprising. He did hold the event Thursday at Warner Bros. studios in Burbank, so you knew he was going to try adding some movie magic. And Musk’s first robot demo in 2021 was so embarrassing it’s hard to even call it a trick. It was literally just a human dressed in a robot costume doing a stupid little dance.
As one credulous user on X put it, “Tesla 2022. Person in a Robot suit. Tesla 2024. Actual Robot.” And putting aside the fact that Musk’s fake robot suit happened in 2021, it would be impressive if these robots were indeed playing rock-paper-scissors fully autonomously without human intervention and holding fast conversations without any kind of lag at all. But we’ve seen no evidence that that’s what might be happening.
Tesla 2022. Person in a Robot suit.
Tesla 2024. Actual Robot. pic.twitter.com/wvwCnlcmQu
— Jason Kelly 🌵 (@_HiddenLayers) October 11, 2024
Musk talked about Optimus at the event without giving any indication that they were anything but fully autonomous. He said they would mow your lawn, get your groceries, and even watch your kids. But doing those kinds of activities would require full AI-powered autonomy unless you wanted to hire a human sitting remotely somewhere controlling them. And then, what’s the point?
Musk also said the robots would eventually cost $20-30,000 long-term and claimed Optimus would be “the biggest product ever of any kind.” But, again, that’s hard to achieve if your robot requires a lot of human intervention behind the scenes.
Gizmodo has reached out to Tesla to get some clarification about what level of autonomy the Optimus robots were achieving on Thursday. We’ll update this post if we hear back.
