Elon Musk was praised on social media when he unveiled his giant robot on Thursday, even if the Tesla CEO’s Cybercab is still just a prototype that may not be released again. But it was Musk’s humanoid robots that got the most attention in videos posted during the event, as the Optimus bots were seen dancing, talking to guests, playing rock-paper-scissors, and even pouring drinks.
There’s one problem: Robots aren’t as autonomous as many people first thought. The Optimus robots were under the control of invisible people, according to one person who spoke to a Tesla engineer at the event, but Musk didn’t tell people that specifically.
“This is not fully AI. A person helps from afar,” said technology evangelist Robert Scoble on Twitter, along with a video of the event at Warner Bros. studios in Burbank on Thursday night.
Optimus, make me a drink, please.
This is not entirely AI. Someone helps from afar.
Which means it’s AI Day next year where we’ll see how fast Optimus learns. pic.twitter.com/CE2bEA2uQD
— Robert Scoble (@Scobleizer) October 11, 2024
Scoble was still fascinated by robots. But it gave the whole spectacle a very different vibe when you knew there were people not in the room somewhere doing at least some of the work. We’ve had robotic telephones (sometimes called Waldo) since at least the 1940s, though admittedly very primitive. Walt Disney used teleoperation to achieve lifelike robots in the 1960s in attractions at the World’s Fair and Disneyland.
The main difference between Musk and Disney is that Disney wasn’t trying to use tele-ops to fool anyone. The whole point was to create a show, unlike Musk’s goal Thursday night. The millionaire did everything in the movie studio, after all. But by not disclosing in advance that his robots were getting human help, many people on social media said they felt cheated.
Musk isn’t the first person to use smoke and mirrors to make robots look like they can do amazing things while actually revealing nothing about how the technology works. The Tesla CEO’s constant hype for products that aren’t available yet (remember the Optimus debut in 2021 that was just a guy in a robot suit?) reminds me of RCA-Whirlpool’s so-called Miracle Kitchen from the late 1950s. Mainly because the kitchen show featured a robot that was actually being remotely controlled by a person in the next room, despite telling viewers it was working alone.
The Miracle Kitchen was the crowning achievement of a 1959 exhibition in Russia that was held during a short-lived attempt to improve relations between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It was a kind of cultural exchange, where the Soviets put on a technology show in New York while the Americans put on a show in Moscow. You may even remember reading about the “kitchen debate” between then-Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Yes, that was the kitchen.
The American National Exhibition had everything from a fashion show to films about US life. But it was the kitchen that really impressed people, as it seemed to display the latest technology, including a central computer with push-button controls and an autonomous looking robot. like a proto-Roomba. But the Americans said it was independent.
Someone uploaded a 13-minute commercial of the kitchen to YouTube, but a one-minute clip about the vacuum is below to give you an idea of what the Russians saw back in 1959.
“What you see coming out of the wall is a self-driving floor cleaner. It is independent and can be directed to any part of the kitchen,” said the producer of the film.
“This cleaner works with a self-driving battery. It controls itself by sensing the electric line on the ground,” continued the broadcaster. “As it passes through the floor, it cleans the loose particles. And if the floor needs to be washed, the floor cleaner will wash it with the scrubbing action of the rotating brush. It will follow the washing with a good washing.”
This amazing robot vacuum would not only finish cleaning the floor, it would do it without being told to come back for a charge.
“And when all the work is done, the floor cleaner returns to its place under the cabinet where it empties the waste and is recharged to be ready for the next job,” said the host.
In fact, the robot was not working independently at all. Back in 2015, I spoke with a man named Joe Maxwell, then 80, who helped design a kitchen back in the 1950s. Maxwell worked for the Sundberg-Ferrar design firm in Detroit and gave me behind-the-scenes information about the kitchen that had never been written about before.
“They had a two-way mirror with a person sitting behind it who could see the room,” Maxwell said over the phone. “And they control the vacuum cleaner and the dishwasher by radio.”
“They said he smelled the phone on the ground, which is probably it,” Maxwell told me. But it was easy to have someone behind the screen who could make all the things happen—from opening doors and taking down shelves and all those different things.”
Having someone secretly sit in the next room was much easier and less expensive than using advanced sensors.
“It was easier to do that than to put all those sensors everywhere, and do what the push-button said. “It was easier to have someone remotely using that,” said Maxwell. “That was to take advantage of the lack of technology.”
Maxwell paused to clarify. “But the technology was not there. We never had anything close to what we have today. We had computers, but they were big boxes.”
You can see why Musk’s robot demonstration yesterday reminded me of this tech show from the late 1950s. The Americans’ goal was to convince the Soviets that US-style capitalism was a superior system, delivering amazing consumer products that even included advanced computers and robots. But this was all a show for propaganda purposes, aided by the CIA and the Rand Corporation and big business.
Some investors called Thursday’s Tesla event “under pressure” because of its lack of clarity and ridiculously long delivery times for the Cybercab and Optimus robots. But Musk often does this schtick of hyping up tech that doesn’t exist yet. And then when people finally come back to Earth and realize it didn’t bring anything good he finds another shiny object to wave in front of Wall Street.
Remember the hyper-fast Loop that Musk was going to bring to cities like Chicago and Las Vegas? There were supposed to be 16-seater private cars cruising at 150 miles per hour. The billionaire ended up taking regular Teslas driven by human drivers at 35 miles per hour through the tunnels under Las Vegas.
At least we can say that Musk’s robots aren’t shouting slurs. Well, not yet.
