The Trouble With Tesla: Musk Might Be Realizing He Needs Humans
October 3, 2018
225,770
4,723
451
2.29%
Search the Record
IndexedEvery word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
Vice News Episodes Around October 3, 2018
See what was published immediately before and after this episode.
2:52Now PlayingThe Trouble With Tesla: Musk Might Be Realizing He Needs Humans
YouTube Description
as posted by the channelElon Musk, a devoted futurist who wants to make driverless cars, isn’t known to have much patience for humans. But back in April, the CEO of electric carmaker Tesla tweeted that “humans are underrated.”
He was referring to Tesla’s experience manufacturing its new Model 3 at a factory in Fremont, California, that boasts one of the most robotics-dependent vehicle assembly lines on the planet.
Tesla spent more than $2 billion revamping the plant, according to analysis from investment firm AllianceBernstein, and started making Model 3s there in July 2017. Rather than make the process more efficient, however, Musk’s experiment in extreme automation has repeatedly pushed back the production timeline.
So after a series of delays, Tesla hired more humans to help out the machines. And now, Model 3 production is finally picking up.
“At the moment, the set of occupations and tasks that robots can perform are still limited,” said Daron Acemoglu, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Technology as a whole doesn't just replace people. It creates new opportunities for people. It creates new occupations, new activities.”
While automation does decrease work hours for lower-skilled employees, there are just some tasks — even repetitive ones — that robots still can't do. For example, activities that require fine motor skills, like the type of dexterity needed to put a small pin in a hole or tie a knot.
Machines are able to process huge datasets much more quickly than humans, but they’re still learning how to learn. And they’re not great at nuance or context.
Subscribe to VICE News here
Check out VICE News for more
Follow VICE News here:
More videos from the VICE network
Guests & Subjects Covered
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.