On April 7, 2022, a display for the product was featured at the Tesla Giga Texas manufacturing facility during the Cyber Rodeo event. Musk said that he hopes to have the robot production-ready by 2023 and claimed Optimus will eventually be able to do "anything that humans don’t want to do."
In June 2022, Musk announced the first prototype that Tesla hopes to unveil later in 2022 at the second AI Day event will not look anything like the display model at Cyber Rodeo.
In September 2022, semi-functional prototypes of Optimus were displayed at Tesla's second AI Day. One prototype was able to walk about the stage and another, sleeker version could move its arms.
On September 23, 2023, Tesla posted a video of Optimus manipulating and sorting objects as well as yoga poses:
Optimus can now sort objects autonomously 🤖
Its neural network is trained fully end-to-end: video in, controls out.
Come join to help develop Optimus (& improve its yoga routine 🧘)
https://x.com/tesla_optimus/status/1705728820693668189?s=46&t=qfz6dEzytObZisI2GEll9g
RESOLUTION: This market will resolve YES if Tesla begins using Optimus Tesla Bots to produce electric vehicles to be sold to customers before January 1, 2025. This question resolves NO if Tesla does NOT begin using Optimus Tesla Bots to produce electric vehicles before January 1, 2025.
DISCLAIMER: I may place a bet on this market, but will certainly resolve this question fairly.
IMPORTANT: Based on the spirit and straightforward meaning of the question, it should be fairly clear that Optimus is/are being used in a functional way, and one that replaces either human or traditional robotic tasks on the production line. If Optimus is being used in a superfluous way just for marketing purposes or for testing only, the market should resolve as NO.
This seems like it is announcing a delay to 2025 from end of 2024:
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1815329637188202550
"Tesla will have genuinely useful humanoid robots in low production for Tesla internal use next year and, hopefully, high production for other companies in 2026"
I expressed my thoughts here:
https://manifold.markets/KeenenW/will-tesla-change-its-state-of-inco#b6zh86bxzbv
I intended for that market to be based on robots actually performing legitimately useful tasks that would involve replacing human or traditional robots on the production line rather than based on Tesla making statements or presenting videos in order to promote the bots potential capabilities.
Can you add some concrete examples of what you could consider 'legitimately useful tasks'?
Many human factory labourers stand in a single spot and move items (fruit/packages) etc.. into and out of boxes in current factories... although mundane, it is still a 'legitimately useful' function in the factory.
I would bet more but this market seems unclear in what its accepting as the goalpost
@Blomfilter @ChristopherRandles
I agree that the threshold for a market resolution is not quite as precise as would be ideal. I should have anticipated that there would be possibility of ambiguity as to whether bots were deployed for tasks in the factory mainly for testing, real world data gathering and learning, and for promotional purposes.
So far we have Elon discussing 2 robots being used in the factory combined with a promotional video shown at the shareholder meeting as well as one sentence at the bottom of a company updates post. My assumption based on this information is that it is clearly for testing, data gathering and learning, and promotional purposes. If the bots were actually being used to “produce electric vehicles” as is stated in the market description rather than just being tested in a factory setting, I would assume more than 2 robots would be deployed.
Additionally, the speed/efficiency of the robots in performing the task shown appears significantly below that of a more traditional factory automated process. It isn’t that the task itself isn’t useful, but that it seems unlikely that these bots are currently able to do much other than slowing down the production line, which is likely why only 2 bots are deployed. I anticipate that if this is actually useful from a production line standpoint and not just production cosplay we will get many more updates and videos of more bots in action in the coming weeks and months, ostensibly delivering value, even if less efficient than traditional methods.
I think the threshold of “here’s 30 seconds of 2 of Optimus robots doing pick and place slowly, aren’t you excited for the future?” isn’t high enough to be in keeping with the spirit of the market and question.
I do apologize that this attempt to clarify resolution criteria might be different than expected for some market participants. I do feel the need to maintain the resolution criteria perspective I shared with other market participants in the below comment 8 months ago. Therefore, I think a higher bar than what we have as of now for what constitutes bots being used to produce electric vehicles is required.
https://manifold.markets/TP8ac2/will-tesla-begin-using-optimus-tesl#UVM8TkCer1l6OjGex5bS
“Deployed two Optimus bots performing tasks in the factory autonomously“
I haven’t seen evidence that these bots are performing functional, non-performative tasks, replacing human workers or traditional factory robots. My assumption is instead they are performing tasks for training, testing, or marketing purposes, but am open to new information and will update as this deployment of bots progresses.
Resolves YES...
From Shareholder presentation by Elon yesterday on June 13th:
see 1:27:00 for what is happening in the Fremont factory
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQhnxPu67G4
"taking cells off the end of a line and placing in a shipping container"
I think would resolve as YES, since the bots are doing actual manual labour a human would be doing beforehand
1:27:20ish
"We also have quite a few of these crusing around our offices in Palo Alto" (not the factory, but the engineering headquarters)
The Tesla Fremont Factory is an automobile manufacturing plant in Fremont, California, United States, operated by Tesla, Inc
1:28:00
"next year we will have a few thousand robots working at tesla"
>"Elon mentioned are actually useful in that it seems like an extremely inefficient method to move cells of the production line and place them into a shipping container versus what the non-humanoid robot method to complete that task would be."
What do you think is "the end of the line"? Is it individual cells or boxes or pallets of batteries?
So that seems rather ambiguous int that there seems like quite a few tasks here:
*Putting cells in boxes
*Stacking boxes on pallets
*Using pallet trolley to put pallets in shipping containers
Doing all these usefully seems like it would need more than 2 robots and I am dubious that it is doing all these tasks particularly using pallet trolley. (so putting in shipping containers means into boxes rather than pallets into containers?)
Latest video looked like putting cells in boxes. Just that task seems more likely. If 50 hours of robot work reduced the human hours from 100 hour to 99 hours, would that be doing "useful work" (Elon quote) and would it be "replaces either human or traditional robotic tasks on the production line" for this claim?
Nobody seems to have mentioned this is on the battery cell production line rather than on a vehicle production line. Does this
1. Not count as producing electric vehicles?
2 Count only if the cells are used in vehicles?
3. Count in any event as being a Tesla useful production line activity?
4. If we don't know whether the cells are used in vehicles or stationary batteries then ...?
These are good points and questions. I’m open to other perspectives and information on this.
My thinking is:
(1) Producing batteries should count as part of producing electric vehicles.
(2) Ideally the cells should be used in vehicles, but I’m not sure we will find out if that’s the case.
(3) This should be considered a useful Tesla production line activity.
(4) If it’s correct that the vast majority of battery cells produced by Tesla are used for vehicles, without any additional evidence we should assume that at least some of these cells are for vehicles.
@kirby Thanks for asking for clarification. I think based on how the question is worded, it would be fair to only require Optimus being used for some portion of tasks in the line of production for the question to resolve yes, and not require Optimus to do everything.
@TP8ac2 What if it's there only for show? Like "we have Optimus here, he's in charge of passing the bolts from this tray to this other tray"
@kirby Based on the spirit and straightforward meaning of the question, my opinion is it should be fairly clear that Optimus is/are being used in a functional way, and one that replaces either human or traditional robotic tasks on the production line. If Optimus is being used in a superfluous way just for marketing purposes, the market should resolve as no.