Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a bold claim, and if it ends up being true, it would be huge for the Optimus robot the company is developing.
Musk, who spoke at the Future Investment Initiative Conference on Tuesday in Saudi Arabia, said that he believes humanoid robots would have a larger global population than people by the year 2040, a major prediction from the man who has been vocal about human population collapse.
Musk said:
“I think by 2040, probably there are more humanoid robots than there are people. Every country will have an AI or multiple AIs, and there will be a lot of robots, way more robots than people.”
The current human population on Earth is 8.2 billion people, but the U.S. Director of National Intelligence suggests that the number will increase by 1 billion by 2040.
For Tesla, this could mean that the Optimus project could be perhaps one of the biggest facets of the business. Musk is known to be overly optimistic about many projects, i.e., Tesla’s Full Self-Driving, and he has said it will be completed on various dates.
The Optimus bot is no different. Musk said at the recent “We, Robot” event on October 10 that Optimus will cost less than $30,000 and believes it will be the most popular product in the history of any industry.
Regardless of belief, the Optimus Bot is, without a doubt, a major piece of Tesla’s AI project moving forward. Musk says the robot will be able to do everything from watching your kids to walking your dog.
