A discussion with Randy Kirk on how rapidly Teslabot and FSD can be developed and scaled next year. How much financial impact will each make next year ? How fast and how world-changing can things get by 2030 and 2040?
Billions in addition profits in 2024 to completely changing our world and civilization by 2040.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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The Tesla bots and their imitators, once suitably advanced (and that will come very quickly) open the possibility of entire factories being robotic, with only a human facility maintenance crew for repairs and oversight. These factories could also probably be repurposed rather quickly. So one of the first and most obvious types of such factories would be a factory that builds more bots, and some of those bots could then build more factories, while others operate them. Combines this with resource acquisition and gathering, as well as automated logistics (autonomous vehicles) — well, this is what we’ve all been talking about for a century or more, is it not? Once this stuff is actually in place, it may even be time to take the idea of a UBI seriously. Certainly a society that saw its GDP quickly rise by one or two orders of magnitude could afford this–but the devil is in the details (and probably in Congress or else making massive campaign contributions to it, or both). Also, just giving money to everyone while expecting little or nothing in return usually works our badly.
Very interesting and exciting analysis! But one thing is missing…what about the competition from other robot manufacturers?
There are already several companies jockeying to produce humanoid robots. Tesla has many advantages, but it will by no means have a monopoly on the market.
Doesn’t matter that much. The market will be so huge, everyone making a competitive robot will sell every one they can make.
Neither will ever happen at scale unless the liability issues are worked out first. Even if FSD and Full Robotic Functionality (FRF) are technically achievable, there will always be some accidents that can’t be pinned on a human. Unless people are willing to accept no-fault insurance settlements for these, neither Tesla nor anyone else – which is more likely for FRF in the near term at least – will accept the liability for public interactions. The military is different because they do a cost/benefit analysis for everything, expecting that some U.S. soldiers might get hurt in exchange for the advantages of warfighter equipment. Soldiers can’t really sue, but the public is very litigious. The first real lawsuit against Tesla for damages that results in a large settlement is going to open the floodgates to others. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already.
$5K/month is too high – even for jobs they can do well, Teslabots won’t be as fast or as easily integrated as a minimum wage human. Lease for $1000/mo for rapid adoption. That’ll still be massively profitable as mass production gets the cost down to around $10K.
Bots will have big impact sooner than SD in the US at least, as regulatory barriers will slow SD taxi rollout. Europe will probably proactively regulate and tax bots, slowing adoption there.
Eventually rush hour SD commuter vans that serve as SD taxis in the city during the day will be everywhere and economically significant. But Bots will still have far more impact than SD.
The one the average consumer will see first is full self driving, the robots will first be in factories.
Pretty sure there’s going to be a lot of synergy there.
Teslabot will use the FSD data, and be free to roam.