Is Tesla Making A Mistake Building Optimus To Resemble A Human? Ark Analyst And Elon Musk Weigh In

Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk has weighed in on whether giving the automaker’s Optimus robot a human form was correct.

What Happened: Musk’s comment came on Twitter and in response to a thread involving Cathie Wood-led Ark Invest analyst Brett Winton.

Though I understand the perspective, disagree.

By spec’ing to human shape and size you guarantee backward compatibility with the existing built world.

Backward compatibility with extant infrastructure is critical for successful proliferation of transformative tech (imv) https://t.co/qO1kyVcn6U

— Brett Winton (@wintonARK) October 1, 2022

Berkeley-based techie Mike Olson tweeted, “‘Humanoid’ is the wrong form factor for a robot.” In response, Winton said, “By spec’ing to human shape and size you guarantee backward compatibility with the existing built world. Backward compatibility with extant infrastructure is critical for successful proliferation of transformative tech.”

Musk agreed with Winton and said, “Exactly.”

Exactly

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 2, 2022

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Why It Matters: On Sunday, Musk said that the “economic implications” of Optimus — Tesla’s humanoid robot — are “obvious.”

On Friday, Tesla shared a prototype of the robot at its AI Day event and said it will take volumes into consideration while making Optimus. 

Musk said that Optimus will evolve and that Tesla’s goal is to have robots that can be maximally useful as quickly as possible. 

On whether these machines will acquire a human personality, Musk said, “Once you have the core intelligence and actuators figured out, then you can actually put all sorts of costumes.”

Price Action: Tesla shares closed 1.1% lower at $265.25 in Friday’s session, according to data from Benzinga Pro. 

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Photo courtesy: Tesla