Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made another striking prediction about the future of robotics and artificial intelligence during his appearance at the Future Investment Initiative Conference in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
According to Musk, humanoid robots will exceed the human population by 2040.
“I think by 2040, probably there are more humanoid robots than there are people,”
Musk stated at the conference.
“Every country will have an AI or multiple AIs, and there will be a lot of robots, way more robots than people.”
This bold prediction comes at a time when Earth’s population stands at 8.2 billion, with projections from the U.S. Director of National Intelligence indicating an increase of 1 billion people by 2040.
For Tesla, this prediction holds particular significance for their Optimus robot project.
During the recent “We, Robot” event on October 10, Musk announced that the Optimus robot would be priced under $30,000 and claimed it would become the most successful product in industrial history.
Playing charades with the Tesla Optimus robot last night. This is either the single greatest robotics and LLM demo the world has ever seen, or it's MOSTLY remote operated by a human. No in between. pic.twitter.com/vCqzk8DDdO
— Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) October 12, 2024
The Optimus robot is positioned as a cornerstone of Tesla’s AI initiatives.
Musk envisions the robot performing various household tasks, from childcare to dog walking.
However, it’s worth noting that Musk has a history of optimistic timelines for technological developments, including Tesla’s Full Self-Driving technology.
my Optimus footage from ‘We, Robot’ pic.twitter.com/gHTjvc2qwr
— K10.13 (@Kristennetten) October 19, 2024
Despite the ambitious nature of these claims, the Optimus project represents a significant component of Tesla’s expanding artificial intelligence portfolio, potentially reshaping the company’s future direction in the robotics industry.
