Opinion Science & Technology

Elon Musk’s Inevitable Robot Invasion

The forces at play make this development a necessity.

Andrew Dart

Published in

Predict

6 min readJan 19, 2024

At a recent Tesla event, Elon Musk unveiled the next generation of their robot — Optimus. It boasted a sleeker, more humanoid appearance. Its hands appeared to be redesigned, and it can now complete tasks using fine motor skills. Musk demonstrated the robot moving eggs and folding clothes, which are very different activities, highlighting that this robot is a versatile platform that delivers a wide range of capabilities. Couple this with Tesla’s continued leadership in artificial intelligence, and it’s clear that Optimus has vast potential.

Indeed, Musk stated that Optimus represents a greater long-term value to Tesla than all its current business. How can Musk justify that? Simple maths — $20,000 per robot with sales of ten billion units equates to $200,000,000,000,000. Did I miss any zeros? Probably!

In a later section, I’ll show why massive sales would naturally happen if Musk could engineer the proposed functionality at his promised price point. But first, let’s look at the critical response to Musk’s demo.

Musk’s Track Record

Most experts were critical and mocked the TeslaBot concept and the notion that it could have much utility. Given Elon Musk’s track record, that may prove to be a tad short-sighted.

Everybody shook their heads when Elon Musk said his private company would launch a liquid-fuelled rocket into orbit. It took him six years to do it.

Most people laughed when Elon Musk said he could deliver an electric sportscar. It took him four years to do it.

Many people scoffed when Elon Musk proposed landing his Falcon 9 boosters back at their launch site. It took him five years to do it. And to land them on a boat, just one additional year.

The whole space industry is taking him quite seriously when he says he can get payloads to orbit for $400/kg when it cost $10,000/kg just fifteen years ago. Hundreds of start-ups have followed Musk’s example on the back of his success — making a new industry.

Similarly, Musk set out to make electric vehicles affordable and ubiquitous. The Tesla Model 3 was the best-selling EV in 2022 but was replaced by the Model Y last year. In fulfilment of his vision, the Chinese EV manufacturer BYD is now selling premium electric cars that are cheaper than Tesla’s. Every automobile manufacturer is releasing EVs or hybrid vehicles.

Based on that history, we should seriously consider what Musk says regarding the future of robots in our society.

The Demographic Imperatives

So, given Musk’s engineering prowess and his single-minded obsession with manifesting his vision, how can I be so confident that a market of the magnitude Musk predicts will materialise?

In 1950, there were just 12 million Americans over 65. Today, that number exceeds 50 million. With the Baby Boomers retiring, that number will reach 84 million by 2050. That’s just under a quarter of the entire projected American population.

Those numbers speak to an exploding aged care industry whose workers earn between $20,000 and $40,000 annually. These people need training and certifications, yet there is a constant turnover of 23% of these unsung heroes.

At $20,000, a robot looks like a very attractive workforce option.

These robots would be on-call 24/7. The skills certifications would be achieved by plugging into a specialised AI. Any updates could be rolled out in minutes across an entire workforce. Additionally, these robots will surpass the conversational capabilities of chatbots today and provide meaningful companionship to their aged care clients. Imagine every conversation being remembered and analysed — what a treasure trove for clinical specialists to catch the early signs of dementia.

The advent of such robots would allow retirees to remain in their homes rather than enter aged care. They would provide a standard range of domestic services, including house cleaning, washing, ironing, bed-making, and general companionship — all on a 24/7 basis.

With the option to access specialist skills on demand, then these robots could deliver services such as cooking (all cuisines), physically assisting mobility-challenged people, fall monitoring, simple nursing, medication compliance, and personal security, to name a few. At $20,000 plus subscription, amortised over three to five years, this would be an affordable option, giving peace of mind to the family.

Rural Inequality of Healthcare Services

If these specialised robots can deliver nursing and primary medical care, then another community need could be fulfilled.

Rural Americans are underserved for these categories of healthcare services, with 13.1 doctors per 10,000 people compared to 31.2 in the city. Similarly, people in rural communities need to travel twice as far to access their nearest hospital. The imbalance for access to healthcare specialists is even more gobsmacking, with the city having nine times more per hundred thousand than their rural cousins (Rural 30 per 100,000 vs Urban 263 per 100,000).

Specialised robots that can take a temperature, check a pulse, look in an ear, examine a throat, and listen to breathing could begin to address this imbalance. Indeed, given the investment into this technology and the enormous potential returns from medical applications, it would not be surprising to see humanoid robots delivering very sophisticated specialist healthcare services soon.

Rather than rural communities trying to attract doctors, I can see a time when a local council will invest in robots to satisfy their constituents’ primary healthcare needs.

Freeing People from the Drudgery of Work

While aged care and health care provide a compelling case to drive the development of these robots, Musk’s vision goes much further. He says Optimus will “be a fundamental transformation for civilisation as we know it”. It will work alongside humans in factories, eliminating dangerous and repetitive tasks. Musk said, “I think essentially, in the future, physical work will be a choice. If you want to do it, you can, but you won’t need to do it. And, yeah, I think it’s basically going to be fine. It’s going to be good.”

Underpinning his sentiment is the population decline of young people in economies such as China, Japan, and the United States, where the fertility rate has dropped below the replacement rate of 2.1. Most Western economies are countering this challenge by maintaining population growth via immigration. But immigration has become a fraught political issue in many places.

Musk’s robots could solve these labour shortages promptly without the political headache. But suppose they can do the work more cheaply than humans. In that case, that will undoubtedly pose even more direct challenges for governments and communities.

Conclusion

We could soon have robots that mimic human mobility, dexterity, and intelligence. I have shown that the conditions are ripe for the advent of these robots. The technologies needed are converging and rapidly achieving the maturity required to give birth to these machines.

The demographic and economic forces make it an almost certainty.

Elon Musk can see this utility and brings his immense wealth and engineering expertise to bear on this task. Given his past success, it would be wise to consider the new world he is proclaiming. Rather than being some fanciful science fiction vision decades and decades away, this world could be a reality in less than five years.

We all must be prepared for this robot invasion that Elon Musk is preparing to unleash.

Ready or not — here they come!

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