Elon Musk Says Tesla Wants to Build a Robot to Replace Human Workers

Still, the event was designed to entice artificial intelligence researchers and engineers to come work for Tesla, so tempting them with the prospect of developing a humanoid robot might get a few engineers who wouldn't have gotten on board otherwise to sign up with Tesla rather than Google.

And it's not like Elon Musk isn't already knee-deep in ideas surrounding the End of Work, that old Keynesian dream of a 15-hour work week (or less) thanks to accelerating advances in technology.

Musk, to his credit, isn't arguing that the world is full of lazy peasants who grumble too much about being hungry or wanting better wages, and that robot workers don't grumble.

But this is also a company that has been dogged by allegations of anti-union behavior, including the murky circumstances around the firing of hundreds of employees at one plant, with large numbers of pro-union organizers among those fired after an "annual review."

The National Labor Relations Board ruled recently that Tesla retaliated, illegally, against at least one employee for union organizing and ordered Musk to delete a tweet implying that Tesla would take away stock options if the employees voted to unionize, a violation of US labor law.

So, while Musk and Tesla haven't always been the greatest allies of the common worker, does Tesla Bot mean that Musk is building an army of robot slave labor? Well, yes, that's exactly what he's proposing, but he says it's for the benefit of humanity, so we'll just have to take him at his word for now.