Sub-Optimus

I sat out Friday's big Tesla AI event. I was actually looking forward to seeing what the company had cooked up after months of teasing, but a combination of rogue stomach virus and the most inconvenient event timing (Friday at 9:15 PM EDT) outside of something held on the other side of the world meant I had to watch the whole thing over the weekend. I'm not sure one can call Optimus "disappointing," exactly. Disappointing implies higher expectations than I think most of us had going into the thing. Elon Musk has largely proven himself to be a great hype man and self-promoter over the years, but in the lead-up to last week's official unveiling, I didn't encounter many serious roboticists who believed we would see much more than what Tesla showed.