General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMusk has a plan to make human labor obsolete. Billionaires are joining in.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/03/27/musk-optimus-robot-physical-ai/Musk has company. At least three different firms have made new forays into advanced robotics this month including Amazon (founded by Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post); Nvidia; and Atoms, a new startup from Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick whose mission reads: Physical automation to transform industry and move the world. Figure, a leading robotics startup, put a humanoid robot in the White House this week that walked the red carpet alongside first lady Melania Trump.
Musk is among a cohort of tech moguls that have seized on humanoid robots, which embody artificial intelligence in corporeal form, to massively transform labor-intensive work that cannot be performed solely by large language models. By applying the technology of the AI race to the physical world, they aim to unlock a new frontier of automation.
With the AI boom transforming office jobs at warp speed, tech moguls see a massive opportunity in replacing manual labor upending fields that have so far been left untouched. Robot armies would be expensive to build and maintain, but unlike people, the devices would not take a salary. That has tech firms and their investors seeing dollar signs.
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The tactic has led to a popular buzzword in Silicon Valley: physical AI. A Nvidia news release this month used the term no fewer than 15 times.
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If anyone believes the tech bros are concerned about millions of people losing their jobs soon, I hope you'll do some research (and not fake research via the AI tools they hope you'll be addicted to).
Musk is trying to convince the public that all this AI and all the robots will lead to "amazing abundance" and "universal high income" - and while at times I think he might be delusional or drug-addled enough himself to occasionally believe his own propaganda, there's absolutely no sign he believes tech robber barons should share their wealth.
These people and these industries are not on our side.
Irish_Dem
(81,198 posts)Environmental and safety protections, etc.
The billionaires are making humans extinct.
Initech
(108,725 posts)Fuck these billionaire criminal scumbags. Especially Elon Musk.
durablend
(9,265 posts)They just haven't found the most efficient way to be rid of us yet.
OC375
(913 posts)Initech
(108,725 posts)Flush all billionaires! Especially the four horsemen - Musk, Ellison, Zuckerberg and Bezos!
Kid Berwyn
(24,346 posts)Which is where the AI robots come in.

ck4829
(37,714 posts)Johnny2X2X
(24,189 posts)People who talk about this stuff bring up how Musk once talked about UBI, but that Musk is long gone.
The GOP is working their tails off right now to ensure that poor people can't buy their children a candy bar as a treat with the food stamp money, these lunatics would sooner execute 300 million Americans than give people a universal basic income.
Marie Marie
(11,284 posts)plans and promises, then I think mankind will be good for another 10 years or more. He is the King of Vaporware.
Yes AI will take jobs - but I think it will be no surprise to anyone but the tech bros when it doesn't turn out quite the way they thought. I see many re-hires of actual humans in the future. AI is scary indeed but I'm not ready to concede that we will all be replaced by it. We are being overpromised on the competence and reliability of the AI being developed by egotistical tech guys who think they are geniuses. JMHO
TearsOfDaClowned
(56 posts)Once those robots are rolling off the automated assembly line TO SERVE MANKIND takes on the other meaning. It has long been clear that the frenzy to go to Mars was the megalomaniac frenzy from the James Bond film NOT some utopian multi-planet species BS. They'll need the rest of earth's $400 trillion collective wealth to develop the tech and build out the habitats and rockets for the 50000 or so who will make up this new eden. The rest of us will fight over the meager scrapings of non productive farmlands turned to deserts and ocean fisheries acidified to barren debris fields. That's why the environmental piece is being abandoned & NASA's geological mission is abandoned, they want all that energy devoted to leaving the rest of us suckers behind.
S/V Loner
(9,544 posts)to tax their wealth by a minuscule percentage.
Sure, they will pass up some profit so that people have a happy life with a universal salary. Not happening.