Elon Musk sees his humanoid robots hitting the market next year, one of several "optimistic" forecasts by the US tech mogul at his first-ever Davos appearance on Thursday.
In front of a packed conference hall, Musk had a chance to tear into a World Economic Forum he has long derided as a "boring" confab of out-of-touch elites.
But in a remarkably subdued "conversation" with WEF interim chair Larry Fink — also the CEO of investment behemoth BlackRock — Musk stuck to his script of optimistic enthusiasm for AI, robotics and space travel.
He was not pressed for example on the scandal caused by deepfakes of his Grok AI tool, or claims of persistent fake news spread by his X social network.
"Who wouldn't want a robot to watch over your kids, take care of your pet ... If you had a robot that could take care and protect an elderly parent, that'd be great", he told the audience.
His Optimus robots will be doing more complex tasks later this year, he said and "by the end of next year I think we'll be selling humanoid robots to the public".
Musk also predicted the artificial intelligence boom will have models that are "smarter than any human by the end of this year and I would say no later than next year".
"And then probably by 2030 or 2031, so five years from now, AI will be smarter than all of humanity collectively".
But he ended his talk with a caveat: "Generally, I think that for quality of life, it is actually better to err on the side of being an optimist and wrong, rather than being a pessimist and right".
The robots were already carrying out simple tasks in manufacturing the company's electric vehicles, he said.
Tesla would begin marketing Optimus "but that's when we are confident that there is very high reliability, very high safety and the range of functionality is also very high", he said. "You can basically ask it to do anything you'd like", Musk predicted.
As Tesla sales fall off, Musk has for some time predicted that the company's future will lie in robots and driverless vehicles.
At Davos, he repeated his prediction that robots would outnumber people and that they would fulfil all human needs, looking after children, the aged and pets. Musk has in the past predicted that Optimus will be an outstanding surgeon.
Lack of electrical power was hampering AI progress, he said, calling for more solar power as the solution. Tesla is active in this area as well.
Musk's Grok software is competing with other AI developers, such as ChatGPT inventor OpenAI, but has drawn criticism for its role in generating non-consensual images of women and girls. — AFP
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