Musk says teaching Tesla's Optimus robot is like raising a toddler

Tesla says it has started building its Optimus humanoid robot, and CEO Elon Musk says teaching it will look a lot like raising a toddler. On the company's earnings call on Wednesday, he said the robot has to learn by watching people and then practicing on its own. He also said Tesla expects to start delivering Optimus to customers by the end of next year.

Why a toddler

Musk drew a contrast with Tesla's cars. Its self-driving software can learn from data collected by a huge fleet of vehicles on the road. A robot has no such fleet to learn from. So Optimus has to pick up tasks the way a child does, starting out wobbly and getting better through play and practice.

He said Tesla needs Optimus to play at scale to get good at real-world tasks. To make that happen, the company is building what it calls an Optimus Academy, where prototype robots practice many tasks and produce training data for future versions.

What Tesla plans to build

To collect enough training data, Musk said Tesla needs to make a lot of robots. He put the number at roughly 10,000 or 20,000, which would then practice on their own. Tesla also said it has begun producing Optimus at its Fremont factory.

Musk was upfront that it will not be smooth. He said production would be somewhat bumpy and that development still has some way to go. He named two of the biggest hurdles:

• Building robotic hands that are both durable and responsive
• Creating AI that can handle open-ended tasks, not just fixed ones

A wider problem

Tesla is not alone. Chatbots like ChatGPT learned from the huge amount of text on the internet. Robots have no equivalent pile of examples for moving around in the physical world. That shortage of real-world training data is slowing the whole field.

Other companies are trying similar fixes. Apptronik, a Texas-based startup, has set up what it calls data factories. Robots there load conveyor belts and sort objects, and the practice generates training data.

What it means for you

For families and business owners, the message is patience. A robot that helps at home or at work is still being taught the basics. The material does not give a price for Optimus, and it does not say what tasks the first delivered robots will handle. Those answers are still unknown.

What happens next

Watch for Tesla's delivery progress over the next year, and for any word on cost and what the robots can actually do. Musk's own warning of a bumpy start suggests early versions may be limited.