Elon Musk’s Optimus Robots are currently slapstick disasters reminiscent of Looney Tunes. However, there’s a significant effort underway to ensure they don’t remain clumsy for long.
Enter Tesla’s secret laboratory at its engineering base in Palo Alto, California. According to Business Insider, the lab’s mission is to record virtually every ordinary human action, repeated hundreds of times daily by a dedicated team of workers.
The AI industry relies heavily on the human workforce behind the scenes, making technology appear flawless. These «data annotators» spend hours manually labeling text and imagery in vast amounts of training data, helping AI recognize what it sees.
At the Optimus lab, we have «data collectors,» who become part of the dataset. Equipped with five cameras on a helmet and carrying a backpack weighing up to 40 pounds, they perform tasks ranging from lifting a cup to vacuuming to sorting vehicle parts on a conveyor belt, including more unusual tasks like doing the «Chicken Dance» and twerking as per BI’s report.
One former data collector described the job as being «a lab rat under a microscope». The work is hard, involving repetitive actions; starting with table wiping, possibly for weeks before progressing. In each eight-hour shift, they aim to produce at least four hours of usable footage. If their movements aren’t deemed «human enough,» penalties apply.
«You take a step, wipe the table, reset, and repeat,» said another former worker, describing it as a continuous cycle until break time.
Robots are central to Musk’s strategy to shift Tesla’s focus from car manufacturing to leading in automation, potentially unlocking vast financial gains. Despite uncertainties over who would purchase them, humanoid robots assisting with household chores could represent a multi-trillion dollar market. Industry leaders like AI robotics firm Figure and Shanghai-based Agibot are nearing the capability to sell thousands of these highly experimental machines, aiming for sales figures to rival those of cars.
Musk has set an ambitious internal target for Tesla to prepare 5,000 Optimus robots by year’s end. On a recent earnings call, he stated that Optimus could become «the biggest product of all time,» with plans to build one million units annually.
Recent demonstrations of Optimus, not relying on AI mimicry or human teleoperation, have failed to impress. A video by Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff shows the robot responding slowly and freezing, with awkward and uncoordinated movements under Musk’s watch.
This may explain Tesla’s rush to amass as much movement data as possible, hoping to mirror the AI industry’s success with generative models trained on vast datasets.
The tasks for data collectors can be exceedingly basic, akin to «teaching a baby,» with some even completing simple puzzles designed for infants. AI-generated tasks have led to odd requests, making some workers uncomfortable.
Despite these efforts, Tesla appears to lack confidence in the robots, resorting to human teleoperation during demonstrations for investors.
«It felt like theater,» a former worker remarked.
More on robots: Disastrous Video Shows Robot Attempting to Cook and Ruining House Interior
Con información de https://futurism.com/robots-and-machines/elon-musk-robot-lab-robot-human-activity
