HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ Mobius01

The Tesla Robot was underwhelming. I appreciate the engineers on stage highlighting their work, but it all felt a generation behind Boston Dynamic’s efforts.

⬐ mhoad

I mean it was an embarrassingly janky piece of shit that looked like a slight breeze might send it to the ground.

Nobody would first look at that and then want to get into a self driving car built by the same company.

⬐ nixarn

I look at that and I want a self driving car by Tesla. Did you see the rest of the presentation about their self-driving tech?

This was amazing by this with the short time it's been in development, and the vision for this project is beyond anything that has been done with humanoid robots. Sure they might fail, but it's an exciting venture to follow.

⬐ esskay

It's pretty hard to get excited for self driving from Tesla. So many of Musk's claims (i.e almost all of them) have turned out to be complete bullshit. They're seemingly still years away from full autonomy, despite him constantly trying to make people think its coming any day now.

⬐ addicted

Have they driven from LA to NYC as Elon promises they would by 2019?

Are Model S owners making more money than they are paying in leases thanks to lending their cars as auto cabs like Elon promised they would by 2020?

Is hyper loop even a thing or just something Elon admitted was something he came up with to try and kill public transport alternatives?

The Boston Dynamics Robot is far more of a commercial reality than the CyberTruck if you really want to put things in context.

⬐ nixarn

Yeah for sure, the autopilot claims and did not come to fruition, for sure, lots of misses when Elon thinks something happens and when it actually will. I don't think personally he's intentionally deceiving the masses.

Not really sure about the hyperloop / train thingy, need to read up more on it.

And BD's robot is not a commercial reality, how many have sold (if we're talking about Atlas and not the dog)? The Cybertruck will start production next year, sure it's behind initial time-schedule but it will be produced and sold in high numbers.

⬐ panick21_

> Have they driven from LA to NYC as Elon promises they would by 2019?

Why do people only ever compare Tesla efforts to Elon expecations.

How many other companies have cars driving around in pretty much every environment on north America? Their competitors have a totally different approach and limit themselves to a few fixed locations that they map out in extreme detail first.

If you take all self driving cars in the world and put them at random locations in the US and tell them to drive somewhere I don't think any company will do better much better then Tesla.

I'm not really a fan of self driving but just clowning Tesla for not reaching the goals set by Elon isn't really interesting or insightful.

> Is hyper loop even a thing or just something Elon admitted was something he came up with to try and kill public transport alternatives?

Hyper loop was never a product. Musk even explicitly stated that it wouldn't be a product anytime soon. He explicitly state they did some evaluation on it and would release an engineering blue paper. This was literally stated outright at the time.

I really don't get the logic 'I wont do X but I find X interesting' and the response a few years later is 'Fuck you, you promised to do X and it didn't happen'. Like that makes people sound insane.

And he never said it was to kill public transport. That was a single news article where a journalist took Musk words out of context to spin his own story.

And people who think California High Speed Rail is failing because of Musk is fucking delusional anyway.

> The Boston Dynamics Robot is far more of a commercial reality than the CyberTruck if you really want to put things in context.

That is totally absurd comparison that makes no sense and illustrates nothing.

⬐ foobiekr

I mean.. checking out twitter, there are just hundreds of people, at least, who were just blown away by this janky nonsense and the "fact" that tesla will "ship millions" of these this year "for $20k."

There's some kind of mass delusion going on.

⬐ mandeepj

> tesla will "ship millions" of these this year

Just like million robo taxis in 2020 :-)

⬐ fragmede

2016 was the original launch date for Tesla robotaxis

⬐ ilaksh

I think he said like 3-5 years.

⬐ esskay

In reality its going to be 10+ years and it'll be more than 20k. Thats assuming they actually release it, they seem to be collecting a pretty large list of vaporware right now. Cybertruck and Semi for example which seem to be stuck in development hell.

They seem to have a real issue actually shipping. Partly because Elon is incapable of understanding realistic timeframes.

⬐ Seanambers

Unrealistic timeframes also has the benefit of getting the most out of people. But Elon is getting quite a bit of flak for the expectations it sets.

It sure will be interesting to see where FSD & Teslabot is in a couple of years. The pace of innovation is extremely high at Tesla and should make you wonder what Boston Dynamics, Waymo and others have been up to for all these years.

⬐ foobiekr

Making things that actually work outside of imaginationland?

How can you look at what they showed yesterday after the rest of the world has made things 109x more capable and conclude that they are innovators in the space?

Even the rando Chinese companies have done a better job cloning spot mini than this.

⬐ tim333

More things working outside of imaginationland than most produce in several lifetimes.

⬐ Telemoto

BD took ages to be were they are right now.

I actually think Tesla showed more than I expected.

At least we now start the rat race for robots.

⬐ moralestapia

That rat race started like 30 (40?) years ago in Japan.

⬐ Telemoto

Probably true but I do mean the real progress part.

Up and running android, big money, fast development.

⬐ m00x

It was underwhelming, but it's to be expected for 1 year of work.

This is also an electric motor robot vs pneumatic actuators from BD.

⬐ benj111

Why are electric motors better?

Excavators etc use hydrolics, presumably for a reason.

I suppose if you want dexterity? But then you'd lose load carrying?

⬐ cosgrove

Did you see the part where the single Tesla actuator was lifting the piano up and down?

⬐ benj111

Yes but if you're statically holding it that's going to burn out motors etc? And just because it can, doesn't mean it's better.

But anyway it was just a general question. It doesn't seem self evident to me that electric motors are 'better' so I was just wanting someone to chime in and explain.

⬐ foobiekr

Choosing the wrong technology and failing to make it work is not an accomplishment.

⬐ nikau

hold my gigapress

⬐ panick21_

Are you an expert in robotics? Why is electronic actuators worse then hydrolics?

In most other places we are switching away from hydroponics because electronics are getting so advanced.

Electronic actuators is defiantly cheaper and simpler so for a consumer product its seems to be the right choice.

⬐ martindbp

Yes, a bit underwhelming, but it's a recruitment event and you've got to start somewhere. Question is how fast and if they can catch up with BD in terms of control.

⬐ whinvik

It seems strange that this comment was so aggressively down voted. Anything related to Elon gets the same treatment by HN that I feel that Elon invites a visceral rather than an objective reaction.

⬐ chinabot

He's generally a force of good for the world but can come over as a bit of a dick sometimes, there are much worse people out there if you need to hate on someone.

⬐ the_only_law

I need someone better to dickride. Got any options?

⬐ justapassenger

I don’t know. Richest person in the world, whose ego is only thing bigger than his wealth, is pretty good person to direct at least some hate at.

And while some of his lies are just to kill competition/extract money from the rich (like FSD), but some are just disgusting.

With neuralink he was openly telling people for few years that his implants will solve their health issues. Implants that killed most of the monkeys in the labs.

It’s disgusting to lie to people with really serious health conditions, give them false hope and likely have them reject other treatments, because Elon said he’ll fix them. You don’t think it’s a good reason to pour some hate at him?

⬐ chinabot

I used to think like this, then I looked at myself.

⬐ panick21_

> With neuralink he was openly telling people for few years that his implants will solve their health issues.

He has invested mostly his own money in that.

Are you claiming there is no medical use what so ever for the technology they are developing?

Based on what knowlage do you make that claim?

> Implants that killed most of the monkeys in the labs.

What data is that based on?

> It’s disgusting to lie to people with really serious health conditions, give them false hope and likely have them reject other treatments, because Elon said he’ll fix them.

What? I have heard most of Neurolinks presentation and not a single time did Elon ever suggest that people just delay other treatments. Neurolink has clearly mostly done animal trials and product demonstrations.

I at least have never heard Musk claim that Neurolink would have a product on the market within a short time period.

Please provide sources for these claims?

⬐ justapassenger

Because Elon is snakes oil salesman, who thinks he’s smartest and most important human in the history. He also happens to have some very successful products, that his fan base uses to silence any criticism.

⬐ panick21_

So he is at the same time a snake oil salesmen that also not a snake oil salesmen because he revolutionized 2 major capital intensive industries.

You realize that makes no sense?

⬐ martindbp

People just can't give someone any credit if they don't like the person or they have slightly different political views, I guess it's just the times we live in, zero tolerance.

⬐ sixQuarks

Anyone who uses the word “snake oil salesman” to describe Elon Musk is delusional and has gone way too deep down the anti-Elon rabbit hole.

⬐ devb

Do you at least get paid for this?

⬐ sixQuarks

Kind of actually. 10x’ed my net worth since 2019 with TSLA stock. It pays when you can see through the BS fud like your statements.

⬐ martindbp

If snake-oil salesmanship is all it takes to land rockets vertically and single-handily kickstart the transition to EVs I'm all for it. We need more snake-oil salesmen leading corporate America!

⬐ justapassenger

Exactly. He lands rockets so he cannot lie? Is that a new law of universe?

⬐ nixarn

There can't be any objective discussions about Elon any more =) John Carmack finds Elon to be smart and really knowledgeable (listen to the latest podcast from Lex Fridman). And you would think HN trusts the words from Carmack? But most think Carmack, who knows Elon personally is wrong, and their opinion based on some random internet articles, is right.

⬐ addicted

Elon is super smart. He’s also a snake oil salesman.

These are not contradictory statements.

Unfortunately he chose his intelligence to enrich himself by fooling others. He could have chosen other options. It looked like that was the direction he was going in. By trying to help people. But it’s clear at some point he realized he can make far more money claiming to do something than by actually doing something and decided to focus on that.

⬐ tim333

I see no snake oil and a lot of cars, rockets and satellites which all seem to work quite well.

⬐ martindbp

> Unfortunately he chose his intelligence to enrich himself by fooling others.

You make it sound like he's selling ads online or something, not building rockets and electric cars, self-driving software and now robots? Like, if you wanted to make as much money as possible and "fool" people as you say, doing a rocket company and a new car company at the same time, pouring all the $100m you earned from selling your previous company, being months from bankruptcy in both ventures seem like a very roundabout and stressful way of becoming a billionaire.

I don't understand where you people get your world view from, are you exclusively reading click-bait news headlines and coming to the conclusion that Elon=Bad? How about reading some actual accounts of the early days at SpaceX for example? I can recommend "Liftoff", it's very balanced, focuses mostly on the employees of SpaceX and doesn't try to paint Elon as some kind of heroic figure, but gives credit where it's due. He comes off as a highly technical, maniacal, single-minded founder, inspiring but working his staff to the bones, and sure, also has some darker sides to his personality. It's the kind of personality that's required to pull these things off.

⬐ the_only_law

> self-driving software

Are you fucking kidding? This is his biggest grift yet.

⬐ jazzyjackson

what has cheap rockets got us but a sky full of space junk? irony is the man trying to get us to be a multi-planetary species is the likeliest to trap us here via space warfare and kessler syndrome

sports cars and androids are not going to improve the conditions on this earth, his achievements are niche, and in the meantime he annoys me. i need not read any headlines to get this impression, just his twitter.

⬐ justapassenger

I assume they’ll catchup as fast as they catch up with their FSD to Waymo. Which is driving customers for years, while Tesla’s FSD cannot go without intervention for more than few miles, at best, in any more complex environment. And yes, I know Waymo uses HD maps and limited geo area. So does Tesla, and they’re explicitly mapping and testing areas driven by popular influencers.

And it’s assuming that there’s actually a market for humanoid robots. Other than futurology folks getting excited about that form factor, there’s no real market for it, and research shows that humanoids robots are almost never a most optimal answer.

⬐ martindbp

If you mean catch up as in FSD is making billions while Waymo is losing billions, yes the comparison is apt. Boston Dynamics tech is very impressive but they don't seem very good at commercializing it. Tesla bot may be janky now, but I could imagine it could do some useful tasks in their factories in 5-8 years or so. We'll see, I think the development will take even longer than self-driving, but at least it will be fun to follow the progress if they're as open as with FSD

⬐ m00x

Tesla FSD isn't making billions. What are you on?

⬐ martindbp

It is. Let's check by two measures:

1. 160k people have bought and recieved FSD Beta at somewhere between $5 and $15k (today's price). Let's say an average of $8k, that means $1.28 billion. More have bought it but are waiting to get access.

2. FSD take rate is estimated as of now to be around 7% of vehicles sold world-wide. At the current price of $15k and the estimated 1.4 million vehicles sold this year, that amounts to $1.47 billion.

Numbers are rough estimates, 50% of revenue is held in reserve until FSD is out of beta, and many haven't received the beta yet, still by any measure they are making and will make billions. What you personally think of the product, or if you think Elon is a "snake oil salesman" is not really relevant.

To strong arm any counter argument, it's possible that all these buyers will realize it actually sucks/doesn't work, sue the company and the whole thing falls apart, but I don't see any indication of it. There are plenty of unhappy and happy customers with FSD, but they've clearly found something that people are willing to pay a lot for and many are happy with it. Clearly it needs to improve much further in order to sell this to the wider public beyond people who think it's fun to babysit an AI.

⬐ benj111

technically that's still not billions.

It's still crazy to me that people are paying all this money now for a product that still isn't delivering the promises of 5 years ago though.

⬐ onethought

Because it costs the same amount as the “auto-park” feature on a Volkswagen - and it auto parks as well. So think of it as “auto-park feature at market rate, that might self drive in the future, for free” - no brainer

The criticism of Tesla is always devoid of context of the rest of the car industry.

⬐ fzeroracer

Are you including the amount they're losing by having to recall those vehicles with FSD? Or the fact that there are lawsuits over how FSD doesn't work? Or any number of accidents caused by FSD being clearly buggy?

Like ignoring how poor your breakdown is over it making 'billions' they've been hit by wave after wave of bad PR. Like the various videos and lawsuits over how poor their quality control is and how many lies they've peddled over FSD.

⬐ martindbp

> Are you including the amount they're losing by having to recall those vehicles with FSD?

There has been one "recall" of FSD, which was for including the option to do a rolling stop at stop signs. They fixed this with an OTA update at the request of NHTSA. Total cost: a few dollars

> Or the fact that there are lawsuits over how FSD doesn't work?

Show me the lawsuits that have been lost and how much the damages were

> Or any number of accidents caused by FSD being clearly buggy?

FSD requires supervision, as such accidents are currently the responsibility of the driver. Even so, besides minor accidents there haven't been any confirmed crashes or anyone being hurt yet. With 160k cars on the road you'd expect worse. And again, this doesn't affect how much money they've made in selling the software.

> Like the various videos and lawsuits over how poor their quality control

You mean the video created by Dan O'Dowd of Green Hill Software, a competitor in automated car software?

Your hate doesn't change the numbers. Maybe you're right and everything comes crashing down, who knows. But this is the current reality.

⬐ Veserv

The product Tesla has sold for money is incomplete with no credible projected date of completion as the general problem of L4/L5 driving has never been solved before. Any profit from pre-selling a solution to a never-before-solved problem which requires an unknown amount of future work to make work as advertised absolutely does not count as “making billions”.

⬐ panick21_

> So does Tesla, and they’re explicitly mapping and testing areas driven by popular influencers.

This seems like a nonsensical swing at Tesla. They have literally 100000s of people on the road with FSD in all of the US.

Claiming that its a few influences is just outright lying.

You are also totally wrong in your understanding of how Tesla FSD works. They are not mapping those areas, save those maps and make them available to other cars. That is explicitly not what they are doing.

More accurate to say that they are building a training set with the input from 100000s of cars driving around literally all over the US.

⬐ cosgrove

Here's a good thread about Optimus vs. Atlas: https://twitter.com/EzerRatchaga/status/1576140275847610369

⬐ memish

How many Boston Dynamics robots have been made and what's the price? And how long ago did they start?

Tesla is going for volume and just started.

⬐ panick21_

The cost of those Boston Dynamics robots is in a totally different class I would assume.

They are clearly better at movement, but not sure about the software and awareness.

⬐ addicted

Before we even mention Boston Dynamics, can we talk about how it compares to the Honda Asimo?

Because it doesn’t.

⬐ ilaksh

In a way. The motion was not spectacular like Boston Dynamics.

But any walking robot especially at that height and size is a significant engineering achievement.

And they have been working on it for months rather than years. And the system is entirely electric unlike Boston Dynamics.

The last demo was a person in a suit.

Your expectations were unrealistic if you are not impressed.

⬐ glalonde

Atlas is also electric. An electric motor tied to a gear pump presumably.

⬐ tonant

Similar robots are built every year in colleges around the globe by jr robotics teams. Walking robots have been around for 25 plus years. There was zero to be impressed about. Walking robots are to robotics as hello world is to programming.

⬐ ztratar

"Walking robots are to robotics as hello world is to programming."

You say this confidently, but it is nowhere close to true.

⬐ sixQuarks

Can you show us some examples?

⬐ Andys

It was not simply programmed to walk, it was also using computer vision to decide where to walk too

⬐ cma

It looked like a very crude depth occupancy model.

⬐ rcMgD2BwE72F

>very crude depth occupancy model

Same as Tesla's FSD and 100% vision based. Is it crude too? I thought it was state of the art…

⬐ retreatguru

I like how Elon is optimizing for hiring the best talent over keeping technology secret.

⬐ Animatronio

At this point the best thing to do is to have the Tesla Robot drive a model 3 around town, picking up passengers a la Total Recall taxi driver.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy2i1U5pS4E

⬐ jerpint

I think this was the original vision behind teslabot. FSD is too hard, lets focus on AGI instead

⬐ gabrielsroka

From Tesla's channel:

https://youtu.be/ODSJsviD_SU

⬐ dmartinez

Thanks for the updated link. I'm not able to update the post anymore, but maybe one of the mods can.

⬐ abudabi123

Putting together the gang that manhandled the Optimus bot on stage and the video of the grand piano being lifted up and down you can see the business usecase for the removalist industry which charges by the step to relocate such a piano from A to B. Decades ago the price per step was $50, not the U.S. dollar.

⬐ aniken

I am curious, if they indeed used first principle thinking in order to design a robot that has to be able to replace human labor / jobs, why the robot needs to have 28 actuators and look and function exactly like a humanoid? It seems like copying exact human form, mobility, and movement would almost be arbitrary, and not really necessary. Anyone else have an informed idea as to why that wanted to so precisely copy the human form and movement?

Most robotics as far as I understand are designed to be specific to a set of tasks, and the design is optimized around that, thus no other industrial robots look exactly like humans, as far as I am aware. Are they being too ambitious, and romantic, in trying to design a robot that does too much while looking like a human?

⬐ tim333

I guess it's designed to fit in environments designed for humans like homes and offices.

Probably there is a bit of "too ambitious, and romantic" going on too.

I see their reasoning as something like that they have a lot of batteries motors processors and AI software lying around from doing cars. It would be kinda fun for a few engineers to try to put those bits in humanoid robot form. Who knows maybe it'll work, maybe it'll help the stock price. There isn't that much cost as they had most of the resources already.

⬐ rkwasny

I think the problem is not in the robot hardware but in the software, same as with self driving cars.

What would help the development would be a "standard" hardware platform one can just buy and add own code.

⬐ chinabot

As long as they dont give it a gun or a dick, Im OK with it

⬐ ncr100

A useful robot with initial purpose that takes job away, now, primarily from black and brown people. To be clear this is a tech product that increases profitability for a company.

Are ethics discussed in the presentation?

Social equity?

Watching now ... it's 3hrs .. looking for ethics consideration.

.. ok he simplifies what an Economy is, to the theoretical. Can an economy be one which frees marginalized people from poverty? I'm skeptical and hope Tesla has an Economist, on stage, shortly. Musk is claiming good intention, explicitly.

Q: So, who does this? Who is planning future economies where marginalized groups are even further marginalized?

Edit: down voting is perplexing, it's a reasonable topic for discussion given the significance of this tech neutralizing Labor.

Edit 2: we should have qualms about technology that disrupts sensitive populations. I have no qualms about introduction of things like Docker which disrupted the people who wrote lots of crazy scripts to help deployment of crazy configurations to process data on collections of servers. The key is the marginalized community, who is not in a position to be able to pivot because they are marginalized.

⬐ naveen99

Elon mentions near the beginning that optimus being developed inside tesla, a public company [as opposed to spacex which is a private company], as part of the governance model.

But this is a recruiting / technical event, so you won't find more ethics considerations in the rest of the video probably.

⬐ ncr100

Well that's sad.

This has a dramatic impact on society. It's not just like a new GPU technology. This is labor.

Consideration for disrupting labor inequity is going to get worse.

The fact that the money people who own Tesla stock are supposedly in charge is a distraction.

Stock owners don't have motivation to make a long-term socially equitable product.

⬐ tim333

It's a bit of a separate issue. When Ford first mass produced cars if probably reduced jobs in buggy whip manufacturing and similar fields but that's more a thing for the government to maybe worry about rather than car makers.

⬐ ncr100

Government is ineffective and is responsive to the change after the facts up to the limits of its constituents.

The constituents are lobbyists and poorly organized under-unionized civilians.

So, I don't expect the government to meaningfully produce any accommodation ahead of time, at least in the United States.

Therefore it's up to us as technologists who effectively represents the brains of Tesla, to do that ethical thinking.

⬐ bdlowery

When shopping carts were introduced into stores people were angry because it would “take away the jobs of the employees shopping for you”.

That’s obviously ridiculous. They went and did more productive things in the store. The same will apply here.

⬐ ncr100

He's literally talking about eliminating jobs from the Tesla factory in Fremont. And then he takes a further step and discusses in eliminating all manual labor.

I think it's reasonable to consider the chance a fully mobile non-human humanoid will actually disrupt labor more so than the invention of a shopping cart.

I'm talking about marginalized people who are under educated and have very good reason to believe that they are not a part of the broader society, black and brown people. This is a real group of people.

Take away their labor opportunity and they're not going to suddenly become managers. Maybe someone will train them so that they become robot repair technicians or something else which hasn't been a likely to be automated.

Who is thinking about this for them? They're certainly not thinking about it because they don't think they belong in this society, already, based on how they are actively marginalized, based on evidence.

So it's left up to us as technologists to think about the societal impact of the technology that we're working on.

Edit: furthermore, I have worked in a grocery store and it was not great. I had to go out of my way to engage with people, to get some of that juicy worthwhile socialization, because the job was to move stuff around. Move new blocks of cheese into the freezing cold open refrigerators. Move purchased groceries from the cash register to people's cars. Move carts from the parking lot back into the store. Not great labor. So having a personal shopper job would be awesome by comparison.

⬐ ztratar

If you're in tech and worried about job losses, you may want to look at how history has literally done this 100 times in the past to numerous industries.

Bringing race into this is nonsense. If the robots are taking jobs, do you think they care what color someone is? They don't. And it's literally going to come for everyone's current job. Which is a good thing, so long as we have an economic system that evolves alongside it. This is quite literally the only way to eliminate poverty in totality.

⬐ ncr100

I have and am!

I argue that different races are impacted differently by different technology disruptors.

Specifically when a robot replaces a manual labor job in a warehouse in Fremont then I believe that's more likely to impact a black or brown human.

Eliminating poverty won't come around for a long time. Just because there's cheaper labor does not mean that humans who are displaced by that cheap labor are going to somehow get free money.

Bonus diversity stats for Fremont: "Tesla publishes its first diversity report, here are the key numbers" https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/12/04/tesla-publishes-its-firs...

⬐ panick21_

People have been making the same argument for 300 years with every technological innovation.

Literally no invention, not this robot by Tesla certainly, would ever have even 5% of the impact the tracks and other farm tools had.

⬐ ncr100

I think the argument that technology disrupts is an easy one to make. The impact of a fully ambulatory robot could be enormous.

So I think it's worthwhile to consider the ethical impact, if the projected success of this robot comes true.

⬐ theGnuMe

If this thing can clean the kitchen, load/unload the dishes, and do laundry it will be huge. That seems realistic based on the demo.

I imagine it will need an impressive amount of safety features.