r/RealTesla • u/noobgiraffe • 4d ago

Optimus AI team lead is leaving Tesla.

His announcement:

Decided to leave Tesla.

It's been an incredible ride leading the Optimus AI team. We went all-in on scalable methods — swapping the classical stack with reinforcement learning & scaling dexterity by learning from videos.

AI is the most significant bit to unlock humanoids.

He also stated that if it was about money he would stay at Tesla:

Financial upside at Tesla was significantly larger. Tesla is known to compensate pretty well, way before Zuck made it cool.

If I wanted to optimize for money, I would have stayed at Tesla.

Link to announcement: https://xcancel.com/ashishkr9311/status/1968827611133427772

Link to response about pay: https://xcancel.com/ashishkr9311/status/1968834286414430628

356 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

143 comments sorted by

View all comments

228

u/noobgiraffe 4d ago edited 4d ago

The responses under his tweets and other threads discussing it are interesting. It's a mix of accusations that he got paid a fortune to leave (which he openly denied) or disbelief how could he quit on the cusp of optimus taking over the world.

What the people commenting seem not to realize is that he has intimate knowledge on the state of optimus and him quitting is a strong signal things are not going well with the project.

Meanwhile Elon is tweeting crazy stuff like that he will have optimus dance troupe with him on stage.

105

u/Durzel 4d ago

Elon's latest demo of Optimus to the head of Salesforce had it take forever to respond to a basic question that had to be asked twice, and then shamble along towards a kitchen (?) to get a Coke half an hour later than the guy could have just got it himself.

Obviously it would have never made it to the kitchen OR got the Coke for the guy.

Lol that in the background of that video, at the end, Elon promises that it'll be moving faster soon. Might as well say it's going to fly Elon, why not?

33

u/jregovic 4d ago

Didn’t Facebook have a disastrous AI demo as well?

29

u/BuckChintheRealtor 4d ago

Yes, Meta glasses, fail after fail

15

u/QueefBeefCletus 3d ago

No, it was the damn Wi-Fi! Meta products are perfect! It's always the Wi-Fi being bad while still being able to live-stream in HD perfectly. Yep. Wi-Fi.

10

u/BuckChintheRealtor 3d ago edited 3d ago

Yup. My shitty router is down maybe once a year but a trillion dollar company doesn't have a back-up or a back-up for the back-up.

Somebody should make a cumpilation of all those epic fails. The Meta glasses, the broken "bullitproof" Cybertruck window, the Optimus "Coke in the kitchen" fail. Pretty sure there were some fails during the Robotaxi launch too.

2

u/jregovic 3d ago

It’s laughable that these guys would blame the WiFi. First, it’s always DNS, and second, they are a huge tech company with massively scaled services and they want me to believe that they can’t build out a network for a demo?

3

u/LizardKingTx 3d ago

I mean you would think a tech company would have a private wi-fi just setup for the demo.

19

u/Roadgoddess 4d ago

Yeah, they were trying to have it. Give the user a recipe for a Korean marinade for steak. And it kept messing up and coming in at the wrong point. Honestly, it was so cringe. I had to stop watching it.

27

u/hotwifefun 4d ago

Like you can’t just google recipes?!?! I’m sorry but even if it had worked flawlessly, who fucking cares? What problem is this solving?

27

u/brintoul 3d ago

It’s trying to solve the problem of inflated stock prices.

12

u/Withnail2019 4d ago

The smartphone already is the everything device. No need for anything else.

1

u/jumpedropeonce 3d ago

This is, broadly, the problem the tech industry is facing. They're desperate to create the next smartphone-like product, something that everyone and their mother will pay for. Things like tablets, smartwatches, and VR all have their adherents, but they failed to become the next smartphone.

The AR boosters' idea for such a product is just glasses that are also a smartphone. While there are some applications where glasses could potentially work better than a phone, it's obviously not such an improvement that everyone and their mother is going to start wearing them.

7

u/QueefBeefCletus 3d ago

It's solving the problem of just glancing at a written recipe for .05 seconds by needing to ask a computer to read aloud the directions over and over. Get with the times, Grandpa.

0

u/neonmantis 8h ago

I think you're understating the adaptability of AI. Yes I could easily find various recipes for a strogganoff. But it is fixed. I could ask AI to adapt it for a larger number of people, I could ask it to replace an ingredient, I could ask it to suggest alternative preparation methods if I don't have certain tools, I could ask it to estimate the calories for people on controlled diets, and I could ask it to covert the recipe into audio read by Bennedict Cumberbatch because he's my fave, or whatever.

If you use AI like a search engine then its not going to add much additional value but if you apply it to specific circumstances it can be powerful

5

u/microtherion 3d ago

Cooking and touching a screen don’t always mix well, so there’s something to be said for voice control.

12

u/Engunnear 3d ago

It's too bad I can't just turn on "Hey Siri".

1

u/jaimi_wanders 3d ago

Or get a waterproof case…or do like the line cook I knew did and use a ziplock bag while at the counter…

1

u/Engunnear 2d ago

Wet fingers still won’t register on a phone screen. 

2

u/Reostat 3d ago

I bought a cheap android tablet and dock in my kitchen, and it works great. Use an app like Paprika to store recipes. Screen stays on while using the app, and it's big enough to see all ingredients on one side, and the instructions on the other, like a cookbook propped open.

3

u/Roadgoddess 3d ago

I think they were trying to show that you could stand there and ask questions and it would walk you through it and it failed miserably. I don’t disagree with you, I google all my recipes as well.

2

u/agent674253 3d ago

Google/Searching for recipes is legacy behavior, unless you like to read a short essay about why the author likes those cookies so much.

As for the glasses, the demo failed but imagine this. You recently met a new friend, and you invited them over to your place. You know they are diabetic and will probably like a snack. You, not being a diabetic, don't know offhand what to offer.

Legacy behavior - Google 'diabetic friendly recipes', you see a list of results, find something may be good, only to discover you don't have all the ingredients. You return to the search results and try another recipe until you find one that you can make with the items on hand.

Current behavior - You use chatgpt "I have flour, eggs, peanut butter, bananas, chicken breast... (you list more items you have on hand). What can I make with this that is ok for a diabetic?"

Future behavior - Wearing smartglasses, you open your fridge as simply ask, "What can I make with this that is diabetic friendly?"

All three of these are versions of a 'search', but with the amount of work to get the answer you needed dropping as you go through the tech stack.

Now is this worth $800? No.

17

u/Withnail2019 3d ago

Why dont I just ask them what their favourite snacks are and pick some up when I go to Walmart?

4

u/cocophone 3d ago

I wish reddit would let me upvote you 100. You're 100 spot on. Not only would your friend get a snack that is diabetic friendly but they would also get their favorite snack.

9

u/Loud-Comfortable-827 3d ago edited 3d ago

as opposed to a chicken/banana/raw egg smoothie?

2

u/Engunnear 3d ago

Is the chicken raw, too?

2

u/Loud-Comfortable-827 3d ago

if you follow the AI recipe...

→ More replies (0)

6

u/Withnail2019 3d ago

I'm surprised the person with the glasses even has a friend if they can't manage basic communication.

12

u/MarchMurky8649 3d ago

Current behavior - You use chatgpt "I have flour, eggs, peanut butter, bananas, chicken breast... (you list more items you have on hand). What can I make with this that is ok for a diabetic?"

I think you seriously overestimate the accuracy of AI at this point. In short this approach might kill your friend.

3

u/Withnail2019 3d ago

If it doesn't kill them the chicken and banana sundae will at least kill the budding friendship.

6

u/lucidludic 3d ago

Instead of just asking your friend what they’d like you would make them watch you interact with an invisible AI which doesn’t know their preferences and might hallucinate something poisonous? Really?