Here's why Elon Musk’s robot is electrified neoliberalism | Van Badham

It is time to evaluate how much transformational control we give billionaires over our societies, and our lives

A few weeks ago, Elon Musk announced that his company, Tesla, plans to have a humanoid robot prototype ready next year. The intention is to create a 56kg machine that isn't super expensive" to retail. Oh, yes: the commercial application of the planned robot is absolutely to replace human jobs - the ones that Musk himself finds boring". Like ones working in factories, and supermarkets.

Some argued the announcement was a troll. It wasn't just that Musk's speech was preceded by a dancer grooving to dubstep in costume as the robot, or that robotics companies with more skin in the long game than Tesla say the technology is nowhere near what Musk's proposing. It's that this convenient moment of dance theatre occurred amid a US federal investigation into Tesla self-driving cars after a series of collisions with parked emergency vehicles.