Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

"Building Figure won’t be an easy win; it will require decades of commitment and ingenuity."

"Our focus is on what we can achieve 5, 10, 20+ years from now, not the near-term wins."

At least it's not Musk's forever "next year".

The problem with the principled approach to high-uncertainty projects is that if you slowly execute on a sequential multi-year plan, you will almost certainly find out in year 9 that multiple of the late-stage tasks are much harder than you thought.

You just don't know ahead of the time. Just look at how many corporations and research labs had decades-long strategies to build human-like AI that went nowhere. And then some guys came up with a novel architecture and all of sudden, you can ask your computer to write an essay about penguins.

Musk's approach is that if you have an infinite supply of fresh grads who really believe in you and are willing to work crazy hours, giving them a "next year" deadline is more likely to give you what you want than telling them "here's your slow-paced project you're gonna be working on for the next decade". And I guess he thinks to himself that some of them are going to burn out, but it's a sacrifice he's willing to make.

This feels incredibly generous. I'm pretty sure his approach is that he needs to keep the hype cycle going for as long as possible. I also believe it's partially his willingness to believe his own bullshit.