Brad Feld

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Humans and Robots Dancing in the Tesla Model S Factory

Jul 18, 2013
Category Technology

My partner Jason Mendelson sent me a five minute video from Wired that shows how a Telsa Model S is built. I watched from my condo in downtown Boulder as the sun was coming up and thought some of the images were as beautiful a dance as I’ve ever seen. The factory has 160 robots and 3000 humans and it’s just remarkable to watch the machines do their thing.

As I watched a few of the robots near the end, I thought about the level of software that is required for them to do what they do. And it blew my mind. And then I thought about the interplay between the humans and machines. The humans built and programmed the machines which work side by side with the humans building machines that transport humans.

Things are accelerating fast. The way we think about machines, humans, and the way the interact with each other is going to be radically different in 20 years.