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“The Age of the Robot” is here - it began on December 2, 2024.
Many will argue that “robot” is not the right term: there are others like “automatons”, “bots, “droids” - the list goes on. While robot may not be the word we use in the future, this is the most accessible to the general public, 99% of whom have not realized that this age has started, let alone that we were close to it, or that it was even possible.
Before I explain what happened on this day, let’s understand the foundation of the first mass-produced robot. Tesla today sells cars - and they are cars, albeit cars with futuristic features. How does Tesla go from being a car to being a robot? It needs intelligence that is far beyond a human’s to make decisions in milliseconds - to make millions of decisions in a second. It needs to be smarter, faster and more knowledgeable than the human brain. It needs to have a brain. It needs access to the data of millions of other cars to learn their experiences and increase its capabilities. A number of years ago, Tesla realized this and instead of using sensors, radars, and programming to try to make an autonomous (self-driving) car, they put a brain inside of the Tesla. They use cameras to give it sight and AI that can collect data from every Tesla on the road, allowing it to learn at an exponential speed that far exceeds a human. This makes the Tesla immensely safer than a car driven by a human - it has learned from the experience of every other Tesla on the road. It has learned how to handle possible dangerous situations in milliseconds that an individual human could not account for.
So what did Tesla do on this date, December 2, 2024? They released the newest version of their AI (Artificial Intelligence software running on a Tesla). While this software is being lauded as near perfect, it is probably somewhere in the 90%-97% range. But what this software proved is that it will hit 99% quickly, which is far higher than any human driver could ever achieve. This next year, thousands or perhaps millions of cars will start driving on their own. There will be no intervention by humans even though they will still be sitting behind the wheel. During this year, laws will be changed that will allow these cars to be driven without the driver having to even be responsible - the driver will become a passenger. Tesla is predicted to start releasing the Cybercab in 2025 or 2026, which won’t even have a steering wheel.
More important than cars in relation to the "Age of the Robot" is the Tesla Optimus Robot. This is a humanoid robot that you will start seeing in homes and businesses in the very near future. The technology has passed the point of “will this work?” - it is very close to mass production. It will be able to do many of the things that a human can do very shortly. It is built on the same concept as the Tesla robot car. It is a functional robot that has a brain that will have the knowledge of every other robot and will learn more and more each day. The robot will learn, for example, how to cook or build a building - it will learn how to do mundane tasks like running errands more efficiently than a human, giving back so much time to be spent doing meaningful things, such as spending time with family and realizing your passions. The Optimus robot will change the world more than any invention since fire. There will be billions of these robots on Earth much sooner than anyone realizes. Our economy as we know it will be completely different in the next few decades - maybe even sooner. Many will fear this new age, but as with any new revolutionary technology, it will move the Earth forward - ultimately, it will change the human experience as we know it for the better.
On December 2, we passed the stage of can we do this and entered the stage of when are we doing it, and that answer is very soon.
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