Elon Musk has said that he hopes to use Tesla’s Optimus robot to follow people around to prevent crime.
Channeling several dystopian visions, Tesla’s boss said that humanoid robots could act as a form of Robocop to stop what science fiction writer Philip K. Dick refers to it as “PreCrime”.
Elon Musk told shareholders at the company’s annual meeting that using Optimus in this way could provide “a more humane form of future crime prevention.”
His idea involves the pursuit of convicted criminals by an Optimus robot that acts as a roaming security camera to stop them from committing further crimes.
“If you say now you get a free Optimus, and it just follows you around and stops your crime – but other than that, you can do anything,” he said.
You don’t have to send people to jail…it’s wild to think about all the possibilities, but I think it’s clearly the future.
Unveiled in 2022, Optimus is designed as a “general-purpose, bipedal, autonomous humanoid robot” that uses artificial intelligence to perform tasks normally reserved for humans.
According to Mr. Musk, future iterations of the robot mean that “physical work will be a choice,” making it “more important” than Tesla’s electric car business.
Despite promises, Tesla has yet to release a commercial version of this robot. Production is expected to begin next year in California.
At the shareholder meeting, the world’s richest man described Optimus as an “infinite form of money” that could increase the global economy by “10 or maybe 100”.
He also floated the idea of one day uploading human consciousness into Optimus robots via his company’s Neuralink brain chips.
With Neuralink, [you could] Take a rough snapshot of someone’s mind and then upload that rough snapshot to Optimus’ body.
I think at some point this technology will become possible and probably less than 20 years [away]”
At the same meeting, Tesla announced that shareholders had approved a record-breaking pay package for Mr. Musk, which could net him nearly $1 trillion if he hits goals over the next decade.
