They were voiced and operated by humans remotely wearing special suits that translated their movements to the droid.
“Today I’m assisted by a human, I’m not yet fully autonomous,”
one Optimus operator admitted on video that was shot by a guest who asked.
For many it was reminiscent of another controversy, when Musk shared in January footage of Optimus folding a shirt.
Keen observers quickly pointed to the hand of its operator, which failed to be cropped out.
‘CALL IT THE PARLOR TRICK IT IS’
Tesla has been training its robots with the help of people using specialized feedback suits, but Musk gave no indication on Thursday that the robots were operating by any other force than the AI with which they were trained.
He certainly did not mention that the ones in the crowd were essentially metal marionettes.
“Totally worthy to celebrate low latency remote control,”
posted Josh Wolfe, co-founder of Lux Capital, “but totally dishonest to demo these as autonomous robots—call it the parlor trick it is.”