Tesla AI Day - What to Expect This Year

Friday 30^th September is Tesla AI Day, a day when Tesla showcases its latest innovations and, let’s be honest, grabs a few headlines in the process. Just like last year’s inaugural Tesla AI Day, when Elon Musk unveiled the Tesla Bot humanoid robot (also known as Optimus), while sharing the stage with a dancer in a white bodysuit pretending to be a robot.

So what can we expect from Elon Musk and the gang this year? Let’s find out.

More Optimus fun is on the cards

It’s likely that the Optimus robot will once again be the star of the day. In fact, this year’s event was pushed back from its original date of 19^th August to give the company more time to work on the Optimus prototype. Will it be ready in time? We certainly hope so. Because Musk has enthusiastically adopted the role of Optimus hype man, telling attendees at Tesla’s recent AGM that everyone will be ‘blown away’ by Optimus. (Not literally, we hope.)

What else might crop up?

Aside from Optimus, we can expect updates on other key Tesla projects, such as Robotaxi, Tesla’s fully autonomous ride-hailing offering. According to Musk, the system isn’t being designed with a particular city in mind, meaning it could work absolutely anywhere – a completely different approach to ride-hailing competitors like Waymo, who have focused on launching in a single city at a time.

While we’re on the subject of autonomous vehicles, AI Day is an ideal opportunity for Tesla to update the world on progress with its full self-driving (FSD) beta. By the end of 2022, Tesla aims to have around 1 million people in the beta, which is a pretty significant milestone for the company. Watch this space for more FSD updates.

Attracting the best in AI talent

While updates on Tesla projects are always welcome, and we’d be lying if we said we weren’t fascinated by the Optimus robot, the real underlying aim of Tesla’s AI Day is to shove the company under the noses of the world’s best AI talent. Musk himself has admitted this, tweeting ‘Convincing the best AI talent to join Tesla is the sole goal’. It’s a major recruitment drive, in other words. And a clever one at that.

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