Humanoid robots, space travel, the science of aging--Musk was willing to weigh in on all of it at this week's World Economic Forum. But his predictions rarely work out the way he says they will. Elon Musk speaks during the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday. Elon Musk, the richest man on Earth, is very good at making money. His track record of predicting the future is less stellar.

Their creators say it's the getting back up part that matters. A humanoid robot is carried by technicians after being knocked out in a kickboxing match at the World Humanoid Robot Games on August 15, 2025 in Beijing, China. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Tech companies are collectively spending billions to turn the age old sci-fi trope of humanoid, general-purpose robots into reality. So far, that momentous effort has mostly produced staged performances, underwhelming demos, and of falling.

Tesla's Optimus humanoid robots showcase abilities in construction, cooking and emergency response in Elon Musk's viral 38-second video that has reshaped robot discussions.

Elon Musk, already the world's richest man, is now on the path to becoming its first trillionaire. Tesla's shareholders recently approved a massive pay package for the CEO, including some $1 trillion in stock options. But the payout will happen only if certain targets are met--including Musk's successful deployment of 1 million Optimus robots. Named after a character, because of course it is, Optimus is a humanoid machine that's supposed to be able to complete boring and dangerous work in place of humans. The robot was unveiled in 2021, when Tesla held an "AI Day" event detailing its future plans.

Why human-shaped robots loom large in Musk's Tesla plans It has appeared in Tesla showrooms, on its factory floors and has even posed with Kim Kardashian. But Elon Musk's vision for his human-like robot Optimus is much grander than that. Since first unveiling it at a Tesla showcase in 2022, the tech billionaire has suggested his company's droid could play a huge role in the homes and lives of people all over the world. Along with self-driving robotaxis and Cybertrucks, Musk believes Tesla robots are key to establishing a foothold in the artificial intelligence (AI) landscape. And investors who signed off on his $1tn (£760bn) pay package on Thursday would appear to agree .

Tesla might be an electric auto maker, but CEO Elon Musk has made clear that he thinks of it as much more: an innovator in artificial intelligence and software, a builder of world-shaking robots. He's also argued that Tesla should be worth a lot more than it is today: up to $20 trillion, he posted in July, more than five times the current worth of Nvidia. Musk has also made it clear that he wants to get paid, a lot. In November, Tesla shareholders will vote on the board's proposal to pay the CEO a remarkable $1 trillion over the next decade . The deal would also increase Musk's stake in Tesla from 13 percent to a quarter.

Has Elon Musk really been awarded a $1 trillion pay deal? Tesla shares jumped 6 percent on Monday after CEO Elon Musk disclosed that he had bought $1bn worth of the company's stock. The move reinforces Musk's push for greater control over Tesla and comes a week after the company's board offered him a $1 trillion pay package over the next decade. Musk's stock purchase - his first open-market buy-up of shares since 2020 - comes at a critical time for Tesla, as it races to transform into an artificial intelligence and robotics firm whilst also grappling with falling sales of electric vehicles (EVs). Last weekend, Pope Leo decried the widening pay gap between corporate bosses such as Elon Musk - whose estimated wealth now stands at $367bn - and ordinary working people, which he said was a major factor in growing global unrest.

It can feel like a dirty secret. Shouldn't an autonomous vehicle operate, well, autonomously? But experts say teleoperations are, at least right now, a critical part of any robot taxi service, including Tesla's Robotaxi. The tech, though impressive, is still in development, and the autonomous systems still need humans to guide them through less-common and especially sticky road situations. Plus, a bedrock principle of safety engineering is that every system needs a backup--doubly so for new robotic ones that involve two-ton EVs driving themselves on public roads.

Elon Musk's plan to show off his dancing robot has left the Tesla CEO red-faced after his own AI made an embarrassing admission. On X, which Musk owns, the billionaire shared an impressive'real real-time' video of Tesla's humanoid robot, Optimus, demonstrating some flashy dance moves. However, when a curious commenter asked the billionaire's AI, Grok, to rate the robot, the chatbot declared Optimus' usefulness is'limited'. Adding to the humiliation, the AI then ranked Optimus at the bottom of its list of the best humanoid robots. In response to the user's question, Grok wrote: 'Tesla's Optimus robot shows advanced mobility with its dancing, highlighting strong balance and coordination. 'However, its real-world use is limited, mainly in Tesla's factories for simple tasks, with broader deployment planned for 2026.' Putting Optimus at the bottom of its top-five ranking, the AI added that the robot has'impressive mobility but early in practical application.'

We present LangVAE, a novel framework for modular construction of variational autoencoders (VAEs) on top of pre-trained large language models (LLMs). Such language model VAEs can encode the knowledge of their pre-trained components into more compact and semantically disentangled representations. The representations obtained in this way can be analysed with the LangVAE companion framework: LangSpace, which implements a collection of probing methods, such as vector traversal and interpolation, disentanglement measures, and cluster visualisations. LangVAE and LangSpace offer a flexible, efficient and scalable way of building and analysing textual representations, with simple integration for models available on the HuggingFace Hub. Additionally, we conducted a set of experiments with different encoder and decoder combinations, as well as annotated inputs, revealing a wide range of interactions across architectural families and sizes w.r.t. generalisation and disentanglement. Our findings demonstrate a promising framework for systematising the experimentation and understanding of textual representations.