The Optimus robot may walk, but only in Jesus can we follow the narrow road to our true home.
Tesla has released the prototype of Optimus (also known as the Tesla Bot). According to its website, this robot is “a general purpose, bi-pedal, autonomous humanoid robot capable of performing unsafe, repetitive or boring tasks.”
Taking in the mail, doing the dishes, folding laundry and countless other tasks will now be able to be completed for you. Other promotional videos and material have referred to Optimus as a “friend” as well as a robotic task-completer.
“It will basically do anything you want,” said Tesla CEO Elon Musk. “It can be a teacher. It can babysit your kids, walk your dog, mow your lawn, get the groceries, just be your friend, and serve drinks. Whatever you can think of, it will do and it’s going to be awesome,” he continued.
This “friend” will cost you $20,000 to $30,000 and be made available in the next few years. Its recent launch party has brought much feedback on social media. Many people are amazed by what the robot can do and are interested in purchasing it. Like many of the recent advances in artificial intelligence, the pitch is that you don’t have to waste your time doing things that you don’t want to do anymore.
It seems that each month there are new technological developments that are making the virtual reality of movies more and more real. It does seem that technology has no borders and that the advances will be never-ending. The “humanoid” of Tesla, as it has been called, is an opportunity to reflect on what these advancements mean for the human person, along with the question: What does it mean to be human?
Technology is not evil in and of itself, but there are clear cautions that we must take so that we preserve human dignity and remember the truth about human nature. A perfect place to start is with Pope Francis’ latest encyclical, Dilexit Nos (“He Loves Us: On the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ”). It is a profound witness to the centrality of the Person of Jesus Christ in the life of each Christian and it also provides relevant content for the discussion of recent technology like Optimus.
Pope Francis comments on the context of our time by noting, “We find ourselves immersed in societies of serial consumers who live from day to day, dominated by the hectic pace and bombarded by technology, lacking in the patience needed to engage in the processes that an interior life by its very nature requires.”
The rapid nature of the growth of technology is an objective fact. It is an opportunity to be humble regarding what we can understand but also an opportunity to proudly proclaim that we are not measured by what we can accomplish efficiently. Our worth comes from our identity as sons and daughters of the Father. No machine or technology has that identity.
While there are tasks that technology can aid us with, small tasks often purify the human heart and bind us with others. The sacrifice that parents make to do the little things around the house out of love for their children is something that can’t be measured. The laundry, the dishes and packing lunches are small ways that parents show that they will choose acting for their children over their own comfort and wants. Their sacrificial love motivates the movement of their hearts.
Pope Francis references this in his encyclical:
In this age of artificial intelligence, we cannot forget that poetry and love are necessary to save our humanity. No algorithm will ever be able to capture, for example, the nostalgia that all of us feel, whatever our age, and wherever we live, when we recall how we first used a fork to seal the edges of the pies that we helped our mothers or grandmothers to make at home.
He goes on to give several examples of such memories that captivate our souls. These experiences deeply define the human heart and showcase the need to cling to our humanity rather than technology. No advancement can replace the moment when a man proposes to his girlfriend or a woman gives birth to her daughter. No technology can take the place of the raw emotion involved in losing a loved one or experiencing the pain of watching a family member suffer.
“All of these,” Francis writes, “live on as precious memories kept deep in our heart.” It is the heart that must be re-captured in our times because the true friend that we all need is not a robot, but Jesus Christ. He is the one who reveals the true meaning of the human heart to each one of us. He shows us the value of doing the little things with great love. He is the one who shows that we are worth God’s very life — that is the heart of the matter.
