From Yahoo Finance, August 12:
When the Department of Defense commenced its robotics challenge in 2015, the stated goal was to develop ground robots that can aid in disaster recovery with the help of human operators. Each android was given an hour to complete eight tasks, which included driving a car and climbing some stairs.
Nearly a decade later, generative AI is accelerating that learning curve, pushing human-like machines to pick up new tasks in real time.
“The holy grail for us is what we call zero-shot learning, or the ability to show the robot what to do, and it can do it the same way that you do that task,” said Jeff Cardenas, co-founder of Apptronik, an Austin-based robotics maker.
That vision is slowly becoming reality. Last week, OpenAI-backed Figure unveiled the latest iteration of its humanoid robot. The robot is equipped with a vision language model that allows the machine to reason visually and self-correct learned behavior, according to the company’s claims.
And in June, Tesla (TSLA) presented an updated version of its Optimus robot at Tesla’s Investor Day and showed it roaming a factory floor. CEO Elon Musk touted the robot’s potential, saying it had the ability to push the company’s market cap to $25 trillion.
Robotics have been integrated into factory floors and warehouses to improve efficiencies for years. But current machines in use have largely been limited to moving from point A to point B and tackling a handful of tasks.
Humanoids that can adapt to existing environments have long been seen as the ultimate test if they can work alongside humans in spaces built for them.
“If you want a versatile robot, then having a robot that can retrofit into our environment so you don’t have to change anything seems important,” said Cardenas. “Today, three to six [times] the price of the robot is spent just integrating that robot into a new workflow.”
Nvidia's humanoid ambition....
....MUCH MORE
Part of our pitch on Tesla over the last couple years is the supposition that Elon Musk is privy to information about the electric vehicle business that scared him. Here's a June 18 post that touches on this conjecture:
"Elon Musk predicts robots, not cars, are Tesla’s $20 trillion future" (TSLA)
The outro from a May 22 post:
....As Intel's Andy Grove famously said:
“Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction.Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure.Only the paranoid survive.”Mr. Musk has his blind spots but China sneaking up on Tesla probably isn't one of them. He knows that Western companies will eventually lose the battle for electric vehicle dominance and something that he saw sometime in the last couple years seems to have scared him into action on the fronts where Tesla has a competitive advantage: access to some truly brilliant people; artificial intelligence facilitated by a long history with Nvidia and autonomous vehicles.
So again, we wish him luck, and think he'll succeed but this stuff is serious business.
Outro now intro! Here at Climateer Investing we recycle! (and still don't know what Elon sees that spooked him.)....
As a side note, Intel would have been well-advised to listen to their former chairman.
On August 11 Yahoo Finance relayed a Motley Fool story where the addressable market got an extra zero attached to it:
Elon Musk Just Said Tesla Has a $200 Trillion Opportunity in Front of It. Here's What It Would Take to Get There.
Marketing is one of the hardest things to do in business. At its core, marketing is a form of storytelling. If brands fail to craft compelling stories, then it's hard to resonate with consumers.
One company that notably doesn't rely on hefty advertising, however, is Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA). Despite intense competition, Tesla has one thing that none of its competitors do. And no, I'm not talking about more sophisticated technology or loads of intellectual property (IP).
I'm talking about the company's outspoken CEO, Elon Musk. Very few leaders in the business world command the same kind of presence as Musk. No matter the context, it seems that the world listens nearly every time Musk opens his mouth.
Recently, Musk posited the idea that Tesla is staring down a $200 trillion opportunity called Optimus. The best part? It has nothing to do with the company's core electric vehicle (EV) business.
Let's dig into Musk's remarks and explore how real the opportunity is.
What is Tesla Optimus?
Most people are familiar with Tesla because of the company's EVs. But what you may not know is that Tesla also has several ambitions in the realm of artificial intelligence (AI).One of the company's biggest AI projects revolves around humanoid robotics, which it calls Optimus. Essentially, Tesla is using machine learning to train human-sized robots on how to perform basic tasks.
The vision is that Optimus bots will become handy enough to supplement the human workers in Tesla's factories....
....MUCH MORE
The next day Yahoo Finance returned with:
Why Nvidia, Tesla are betting on AI-powered humanoid robots
The Yahoo Finance coverage is reminiscent of that song "For what it's worth". We know TSLA and NVDA are doing something but don't yet know what
"There's something happening here
But what it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
A-telling me I got to beware..."
Elon Musk denies giving Cybertruck to Chechen leaderSo we shall see where all this ends up.
Ramzan Kadyrov pulls off apparent new prank, thanking Musk for 'sending' him Tesla Cybertruck
