Much of the current attention around AI has been centered around LLMs, but there’s a lot happening in the field of robotics as well.
Elon Musk says that there will soon be as many as five humanoid robots for every human on the planet. “I think probably most people, if not everyone, would like to have their own personal C3PO, or R2D2,” he said at CES 2025, referring to robots from Star Wars. “Actually think humanoid robots will be the biggest product ever in history, by far,” he added.
“You can just say, well, every human is gonna want one, and some will want two. And then there’ll be all of the industry in terms of making and providing products and services. So you have to say, what’s the ratio of humanoid robots to humans? My guess is it’s least at least three to one, four to one, maybe five to one. So we’re talking about 20, 30 billion humanoid robots,” he explained.
Musk says that we might have to rethink society when robots outnumber humans five to one. “Tt’s not even clear what money means at that point. Assuming that things haven’t gone awry in the good AI scenario, I think we we won’t have universal basic income — we’ll have universal high income,” he said.
Musk is playing his part in what he believes will be the upcoming robotics revolution. Tesla makes the Optimus series of robots that it debuted at an event recently. “Our Optimus robot is the most sophisticated humanoid robot in the world,” Musk claimed. “It’s got a hand that has 22 degrees of freedom. It looks and feels like a human hand. And we’re aiming to have several thousand of those built this year. Initially, we’ll test them out at Tesla factories. But then, assuming things go well, we’ll 10x that output next year,” he added.
Moving to robots will likely be the next logical step for the AI revolution. Most experts agree that while AI will be able to do most cognitive tasks better than humans in the next few years, it could be some time before it makes it way to the physical world. But AI could likely speed up developments in robotics as well — AI systems could be used to control robots and give them intelligence that they didn’t currently have to navigate the real world, and also help build and improve the mechanics and material science that’s needed to create effective robots. And once that happens, Musk’s prediction of having 5 robots for every human being might well end up coming true.