Elon Musk says Optimus will 'eliminate poverty' in speech after his $1 trillion pay package was approved (www.businessinsider.com)

At a Tesla shareholder meeting where investors approved Elon Musk’s controversial $1 trillion compensation package, Musk laid out a sweeping economic vision in which his humanoid robot, Optimus, “will actually eliminate poverty.” He argued that Optimus — which Tesla is still designing and has only demoed in simple public stunts — could make labor optional by being far more productive than humans (Musk claims ~5× annual productivity because robots can operate 24/7), expand the global economy by 10–100×, and enable a “universal high income” in a benign scenario. The pay package’s milestones include selling one million Optimus units within a decade, and Musk projects eventual unit costs of $20–30k if volume production is achieved. The announcement matters for AI/ML and robotics communities because it ties massive corporate incentives to ambitious commercial deployment of embodied AI, accelerating pressure to solve hard engineering problems (notably dexterous hands and robust real-world autonomy) while raising urgent social, economic, and policy questions. Musk’s claims presuppose breakthroughs in perception, manipulation, safety, and cost scaling; if realized, they would reshape labor markets and spur debates over universal basic income, governance, and mitigation of disruption. For now, Optimus remains an aspirational platform with large promise but significant technical and societal hurdles ahead.