Brain Missing Alert! Elon Musk's Optimus

I just recently watched the "show" Elon Musk put on at Tesla AI day when Optimus was first shown to the public… and I was not impressed. Even the crowd in that video looked unimpressed - I think they only clapped because they felt bad if they didn't. If you don't know what I am talking about, watch this.

Now that we are all on the same page, let's keep talking about why I think that "robot" display was plainly put… pathetic.

That robot barely moved, and it moved badly. It proved that it can make a few steps forward and wave "hi" with its "hands", but even then it looked like it would fall on its face at any minute.

The utility of that robot is absolutely zero unless you want to attach some extra adornments to it (if you know what I mean). Even the things shown in the video after the official "demo" was over were just plain lame. The robot had some kind of…umbilical cord… attached to it. Probably connected to some sort of supercomputer which was in turn connected to a nuclear plant.

Anyway, moving on from this… It was plain and simple nothing impressive. It was just like in the case of the famous Sophia chatbot. Just a simple algorithm placed on a humanoid bot with a face that has the ability to badly mime some human emotions. Now, Sofia has a brother, which has some kind of movement handicap also - and lacks a brain. It must be running in their family.

Both Sophia and her little brother Optimus are brainless bots. They have only limited intelligence and limited things they can do. Sophia has such a limited number of things she can correctly answer, she actually always has a script she is following. She hasn't yet reached full conversational level intelligence yet, and won't reach it anytime soon. Both robots are just marketing stunts.

Elon Musk promises that he will deliver those bots for only US $20 000. Well, considering what that bot is able to do, I wouldn't pay even half of that price. You can get a sex doll for much less - because right now that's exactly what both Optimus and Sophia are.

They may look impressive to people who are not close to the artificial intelligence area, but to experts, they are just a few sparks, pipes, and wires - there is no intelligence there, and nothing amazing.

If higher intelligence is to be achieved on these kinds of bots, a better type of computing and better theory of intelligence needs to be explored.

One possible type of computing unit that will be able to achieve that intelligence is neuromorphic computing - which you can read about more in one of my previous articles.

However, we have much more research and exploration to do in both the areas of exploring the human brain and intelligence and creating new hardware paradigms that can be used to encapsulate that intelligence.

This means I am absolutely certain that Optimus will be useless on its first release. I am not saying it won't be bought by people. Musk proved that he has a loyal follower base with Dogecoin.

What I am saying is that Optimus won't do anything too awesome in the next 5 years. If Musk invests a lot of money into this bot and researches ways in which to make it better, in maybe 5 to 10 years Optimus will actually be a useful tool for people. Just don't get your hopes up that it will leave you in awe anytime soon.

These were just my thoughts on Optimus and Sophia. I remain unimpressed by these lame marketing stunts they are trying to pull.

Compared to Boston Dynamics, a company that was founded 30 years ago, and has worked hard on their robots, these 2 (Optimus and Sophia) simply look and behave like insults to anyone creating serious robots. Boston Dynamics remains my favorite pick when it comes to robotics.

However, I know for a fact that we may have the skeletons and joints of robots, but we are still missing their brain. People should really start paying more attention to how to actually build that brain - because I can bet all of my money that it won't work on digital processors.

These were just my thoughts and opinions, so don't take them too badly.

Good luck and stay safe!