Elon Musk introduced Tesla’s most recent creation, a humanoid robot called Optimus.

Elon Musk introduced Tesla’s most recent creation, a humanoid robot called Optimus. The mechanical figure walked out on stage and waved at the crowd. It's supposed to be able to complete simple tasks such as watering plants. Kathryn Minshew, CEO of The Muse, joined Cheddar News to discuss. "Do I think that within the next 10 years will all be replaced by robots? Absolutely not," she said. "There are so many jobs that only a human currently is capable of. But that said, we collectively need to start investing in upskilling education and professional development for the workforce because we are going to see some major changes."<br>

Tesla Introduces Robot Optimus at AI Day — But Humans Won't Be 'Replaced'

joining us now to discuss is Kathryn Minshew Ceo of the muse, Kathryn welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining us. Break down what Elon musk says this bot is all about and what customers will be able to use it for. Absolutely. So first of all the reveal of the optimist robot is something that has been long anticipated because Tesla is a company that doesn't do anything quietly. And I think there are a lot of industry watchers wondering to see what is Tesla and what is Elon's perspective on the robotics revolution going to be one thing I want people to understand as you read the coverage of Tesla's Ai day, is that one of the key go For Tesla here is actually recruiting. They are looking to attract great engineers around the world to come to Tesla by demonstrating some of this technology. Now with that said it was a very impressive demonstration. We saw optimists as you can see, walk across the stage on two ft. There were also some prerecorded videos of optimists accomplishing other tasks carrying a box watering plants. This was in some ways I think shocking to a lot of people to see a robot that is such a humanoid fashion. And yet a lot of the tasks themselves were very simple. They had to be prerecorded because of the risk of failure and even Ellen admitted on stage that they kept the demonstration very simple because they didn't want the robot to fall on its face and so you know what I think we're seeing in the coverage is that a lot of watchers of the robotics industry were a little underwhelmed in fact by the demonstration given some of the other innovations and robotics that we see out there in the market. But that said that it was very impressive to both the general public and likely to the core audience that Tesla is often speaking to these days, which is talent and which is engineers, which they are always in need of more of and always in competition with other top tech businesses for now. Katherine when I think of Tesla, I think of an electric vehicle maker uh you know, exploring some self driving technology but a humanoid robot. Is this in line with Tesla's mission here? Well, well, you know, I think that's a great question and I think anyone who has watched Ellen for a long time has noticed that his vision and his ambition tends to be very wide ranging. Um and so, you know, I think I'm not at all surprised that Tesla has said you know what, we have made some great advances in ai in computer vision with the Tesla. Um and you know why not apply that in a totally different field That said, robotics, particularly humanoid robotics that can interact in settings that are designed for humans or alongside human workers is a very very um it's a challenging field. It's one in which we're seeing a tremendous amount of innovation. So I think the fact that Tesla plans to employ these robots in its own factories. It's very interesting because they will get a lot of real world data. But I also think that we have a long road ahead of us before most tasks can be replaced by a robot. The exception, I would say is kind of single use or single purpose tasks where there is one repetitive motion robots are great at that. And so I'm very curious to see over the next year or two what the optimist does in that regard. Now, to your point, this robot a little bit underwhelming to some of the robotics industry, we know Elon musk has a history of making, uh, you know, claims that don't necessarily pan out at least not immediately. So from your perspective will robots like these replace human workers to the point where as musk has claimed, we might even necessitate a universal basic income for some americans. And if so, what is the timeline for something like that? Well, I think these are questions that as a society we do need to start grappling with now because the rise of automation is coming, it's not going to be as dramatic as some of the most, you know, doomsday headlines have predicted. But I do think we will see the, you know, the replacing of some assembly line jobs, some fast food jobs. Again, jobs where there there's a single action performed over and over again. Um, there's a lot of advancement in allowing technology and machines to take over some of those those jobs. And at the same point there's actually a shortage of talent of of workers of labor in um machine maintenance for a lot of these new robotics in. Um there's there's sort of a variety of jobs that are being created and developed that companies are investing in up skilling workers for. And so, you know, do I think that within the next 10 years will will all be replaced by robots? Absolutely not. There are so many jobs that only a human currently is capable of. But that said, we collectively need to start investing in up skilling education and professional development for the workforce because we are going to see some major changes. And I think if we don't react thoughtfully as a society, we could leave a segment of the population behind in the workforce. And I don't think that serves anybody's purposes well, Catherine, we're going to have to leave it there. But such an interesting conversation. That's Kathryn Minshew Ceo of the muse