Talks to Watch

Optimus - Gen 2 | Tesla

10.8M views · Dec 13, 2023 · 1:44 · 0 HN recommenders · 3 mentions · discussed 2024–2025

Tesla's short promotional video of Optimus Gen 2, its humanoid robot, with new actuators and sensors, faster hands, faster walking and lower weight.

Why Hacker News points people here: Cited only as an example of humanoid robots in development, not as something to learn from.

What Hacker News said 3

Cites ittintorMar 2024
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What counts then? They intentionally included combat training in the dataset. It is in their Technical Report. How can combat training not be interpreted as "principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people"? Do you believe the agent was trained to distinguish game from reality, and refuse to operate when not in game environment? No safety mechanisms were mentioned in the technical report. This agent could be deployed on a weaponized quad-copter, or on Figure 01 [0] / Tesla Optimus [1] / Boston Dynamic Atlas. [0] link [1] this video

in “A generalist AI agent for 3D virtual environments” · view on HN
Cites itpaulsutterJun 2024

Tesla Optimus listed among examples of new robotics

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Robotics is on the cusp of total reinvention. Almost everything that it took to make robots work is about to become archaic. The core ideas in old robotics will become a framework for the guardrails for new robotics, but this will widely become a solved problem that few need to think about Stanford Aloha link MIT link Figure/OpenAI link Tesla Optimus this video NVIDIA Groot, link

in “The Mythical Non-Roboticist: Wouldn't it be great if everyone could do robotics?” · view on HN
Cites itcs702Sep 2025

Example of humanoid robots in development

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Missing from his analysis: * The potential impact of humanoid robots currently in development.[a] What happens in the US, in Europe, in China, and other countries if (when) anyone can buy/lease a humanoid robot that speaks human languages, for less than the price of a cheap car, capable of performing any task performed today by human beings, at a tiny fraction of the annual expense (a few hundred dollars a year per robot)? * The potential impact of AGI, should it become possible.[b] What happens in the US, in Europe, in China, and other countries if (when) anyone can buy/subscribe to software that speaks human languages, for less than the price of a phone plan, capable of performing any task performed on a computer today by human beings, at a tiny fraction of the annual expense? --- [a] Examples include humanoid robots by Tesla, Agility, 1X, and others. Videos: this video , link , link . [b] There's no agreement as to whether AGI is possible, but predictions by people like Hans Moravec, Ray Kurzweil, and Vernor Vinge, going back to the 1980's (half a century ago), so far , are proving... right. We cannot blindly dismiss the possibility of AGI.

in “Nassim Taleb: The world in which we live” · view on HN