Elon Musk has announced a humanoid robot designed to help people complete repetitive, boring tasks that people hate to do.
Musk suggested it could help you run to the grocery store, but presumably it could handle any number of tasks involving manual labor.
Tesla is developing Musk's robots.
That might seem antithetical to the company's carmaking business, until you consider that Tesla isn't a typical car maker.
The so-called "Teslabot" is a concept for a sleek, 56kg humanoid robot that will combine Tesla's automotive AI and autopilot technology to plan and track routes, navigate traffic -- in this case pedestrians -- and avoid obstacles.
Dystopian sci-fi overtones aside, the plan makes sense, albeit within Mr Musk's business strategy.
As Musk said at the Tesla robotics launch, successful advanced technology must learn to harness it in the same way as humans.
Tesla's cars and robots, however, are only tangible products of a more far-reaching plan to create a future in which advanced technology frees humans from their biological roots by fusing biology and technology.
A man with big plans.
Self-driving cars, interplanetary rockets and brain-computer interfaces are a step toward the future musk envisions as humanity's savior.
In the future, energy will be cheap, abundant and sustainable; Humans will work harmoniously with, and even merge with, intelligent machines; Humans will become an interstellar species.
To judge by Musk's various efforts, it's a future that will be built on a set of foundational connected technologies, including sensors, actuators, energy and data infrastructure, systems integration, and substantial advances in computer power.
Together, these factors form a powerful toolbox for creating transformative technologies.
Musk envisions that humanity will eventually surpass our evolutionary heritage -- humans, or "super-humans" -- through technology that transcends humanity.
But before technology can be superhuman, it first needs to be human -- or at least designed to thrive in a human-designed world.
This innovative approach to making technology more human is the foundation of Tesla's vehicle technology, including the widespread use of optical cameras.
When connected to artificial intelligence "brains," these devices are meant to help vehicles autonomously navigate road systems that, in Musk's words, are "designed for biological neural networks with optical imagers" -- in other words, people.
According to Musk, it's only a small step from human-inspired "robots on wheels" to humanoid robots with legs.
Easier said than done.
Tesla's "fully autonomous" technology, including the suspiciously named Autopilot, is a starting point for developers of Tesla robots.
While the technology is impressive, it has not proved entirely reliable.
Crashes and deaths linked to Tesla's autopilot mode -- the latest involving algorithms having trouble identifying parked emergency vehicles -- raise questions about the wisdom of releasing the technology into the wild so soon.
Could something similar happen with tesla robots?
The Tesla robot comes with an orphan risk portfolio.
These include threats to privacy and autonomy when robots collect, share and process potentially sensitive information; Challenges related to how people might perceive and respond to humanoid robots; Potential mismatches between ethical or ideological views - for example, in controlling crime or maintaining civil protest; And so on.
These challenges are rarely addressed in engineers' training, but ignoring them can be disastrous.
Tesla Robot.
Initial plans called for the Tesla robot to stand 5 feet 8 inches tall and weigh 125 pounds.
Although tesla robot may seem to be benign, even a joke - if it is to succeed in business is also good, its developers, investors, the future of consumer and others need to put forward some pointed questions, such as how it may threaten the important things for them, and how to respond to these threats.
These threats may be as specific as people making unauthorized modifications to improve a robot's performance -- for example, making it move faster than its designers intended -- without regard to the risks, or as common as technology that is being weaponized in novel ways.
They are also subtle, like how humanoid robots threaten job security or how robots that include advanced surveillance systems undermine privacy.
Then there's the challenge of technological bias, which has plagued AI for some time, especially when it leads to learned behavior that turns out to be highly discriminatory.
For example, ai algorithms have produced sexist and racist results.
Because we can? Because we should?
The Tesla robot may seem like a small step toward Musk's vision of superhuman technology, and could easily be dismissed as arrogant showmanship.
But the bold plans underpinning it are serious - and they raise equally serious questions.
How responsible is Mr Musk's vision, for example?
Just because he can work to create the future he dreams of, who is to say he should?
Is the future Musk is trying to bring to humanity the best?
Who will bear the consequences if things go wrong?
When used correctly, these are transformational ideas and technologies that can open up a promising future for billions of people.
But if consumers, investors and others get caught up in the glitz of new technology, or shrug off the hype and fail to see the bigger picture, society runs the risk of handing the future to wealthy innovators whose visions exceed their understanding.
If their vision of the future does not match the aspirations of the majority, or is disastrously flawed, they risk standing in the way of building a just and equitable future.
Maybe that's dystopian future robots - science fiction movies - with tesla robot from concept to reality, people should learn eternal lesson - not to create excess humanoid robot, the more obvious concerns but who decided to imagine the future, and become a part of build the future, this is a much bigger challenge.
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