Elon Musk To Make Androids Like Star Trek's Mr. Data - The Tesla Bot
Elon Musk Asks: Want to buy a Tesla Bot android?
Tech titan Elon Musk wants you to buy an android.
Let’s talk to the model for Musk’s inspirational electric dreams. Hailing Frequencies Open. Substack to Enterprise. Connection Established. What do you think of the news, Mr. Data? Afraid of a little friendly competition?
It’s unusual for our beloved Data to be so quiet, but you can’t blame him. Elon Musk says the androids will be coming soon, which means Mr. Data may not be so unique anymore.
The ever unpredictable billionaire has officially dubbed his future artificial intelligent lifeform, The Tesla Bot. Musk’s slender humanoid robot supposedly will be designed to free us all from drudgery by taking on and completing our necessary but “boring tasks”. Tesla will lend its Full Self-Driving Computer code to enable this breakthrough bot to assist with its spatial awareness. To add more facility and provide us with more information, a screen on the bot will display all sorts of useful information.
How handy. To quote a fabled Scottish engineer - How quaint. Now, why didn’t his creator, Noonian Soong, give Data a screen to offer up even more data? Speculation? Simple information overload, perhaps.
Musk says his electronic servant should be able to shop for us. Simply tell it what you want at the store, and it will go and fetch some groceries and whatnot. I don’t remember Data ever getting Captain Picard’s lunch or fetching him his Earl Grey Tea, Hot, but of course Data had more important things on his positronic plate to tackle. Sure, his Captain’s tea ranks as an important task, but balancing more efficient warp engine equations with Mister LaForge naturally must take a wee bit of precedence.
Data Doesn’t Do Dull
When we think of Data, the android played by actor Brent Spiner on Star Trek: The Next Generation, we never think dull. Sure, his sense of humor - or sharp lack thereof - may become grating or annoying, but Data is a valuable resource of information and his personality never lets us forget he’s not just a high tech thing to be used, but a sentient lifeform with sharp decision making skills.
Picard proved the sentience for his bridge officer in the episode, Measure Of A Man, while Riker, acting as prosecutor, did his best to try to convince us that Data was a mere thing - a tool to be used in anyway we desire or require. The episode was important to show Starfleet, Data’s crewmates, and us as an audience, just how special and unique he is to the Enterprise’s prime directive mission of exploration.
Of course there are other sci-fi model robotic assistants. For example, the droids George Lucas gave us in Star Wars. C3PO and his little rowdy buddy, R2D2, may not be as sophisticated or as useful as Mr. Data, but we can’t imagine them simply going around doing the dull duties. Jabba The Hutt may beg to differ and did put them to work on his magnificent floating barge. And I must say, R2D2 acting as a drink and snack cart combo server impressed me an inspired idea.
Tesla - Elon Musk’s Expanding Universe of Tech
Although Tesla is known for all-electric vehicles with an intuitive control interface, a robotic assistant could compliment the Tesla car for a curious public. Naturally, it should be designed to be easy to operate and control, however, there’s always room for advising those new to the tech.
One company, Drivyn, is quickly becoming one of the most popular of these advisory organizations. Expert drivers and enthusiasts known as Drivyn Advisors act much like a Starfleet crew of professionals to mentor new Tesla drivers. Perhaps the Tesla Bot will require some mentoring as well. Even Starfleet androids such as Data on his Enterprise would be proud of such skilled guidance.
It’s clear that if Elon Musk perfects his Tesla Bot, it will still be a long time before it evolves into as complex and personable an artificial lifeform as our legendary Mr. Data. Or even tickle us as the excitable C3PO and bullet built buddy R2D2.
Just with so much of our tech toys, I’m betting the ultimate owners of this device will start to attribute humanistic identifiers. It’s a similar kind of behavior we exhibit with our computers, cell phones or say Amazon’s Echo device, Alexa. I’ve laughed heartily along with my Alexa, then screamed at it for being so slow to respond, dopey, or not very useful. Ultimately, in the end, the Amazon device, like many others, has become an important, even essential part of my daily life. It’s hard to imagine life without it now. Let’s see if Mr. Musk can pull that one off when bringing out his Tesla Bot and maybe we’ll all think of it as completely indispensable.