Dojo was unveiled at Tesla’s annual AI Day last year but the project was still in its infancy. At AI Day 2022, Tesla unveiled the progress it has made with Dojo over the course of the year.

The supercomputer has transitioned from just a chip and training tiles into a full cabinet. Tesla claims that it can replace six GPU boxes with a single Dojo tile, which it says is cheaper than one GPU box.

Per tray, there are six Dojo tiles. Tesla claims that each tray is equivalent to “three to four full-loaded supercomputer racks”. Two trays can fit in a single Dojo cabinet with a host assembly.

Such a supercomputer naturally has a large power draw. Dojo requires so much power that it managed to trip the grid in Palo Alto.

“Earlier this year, we started load testing our power and cooling infrastructure. We were able to push it over 2 MW before we tripped our substation and got a call from the city,” said Bill Chang, Tesla’s Principal System Engineer for Dojo.

In order to function, Tesla had to build custom infrastructure for Dojo with its own high-powered cooling and power system.

An ‘ExaPOD’ (consisting of a few Dojo cabinets) has the following specs:

• 1.1 EFLOP
• 1.3TB SRAM
• 13TB DRAM

Seven ExaPODs are currently planned to be housed in Palo Alto.

Dojo is purpose-built for AI and will greatly improve Tesla’s ability to train neural nets using video data from its vehicles. These neural nets will be critical for Tesla’s self-driving efforts and its humanoid robot ‘Optimus’, which also made an appearance during this year’s event.

Optimus

Optimus was also first unveiled last year and was even more in its infancy than Dojo. In fact, all it was at the time was a person in a spandex suit and some PowerPoint slides.

While it’s clear that Optimus still has a long way to go before it can do the shopping and carry out dangerous manual labour tasks, as Tesla envisions, we at least saw a working prototype of the robot at AI Day 2022.

“I do want to set some expectations with respect to our Optimus robot,” said Tesla CEO Elon Musk. “As you know, last year it was just a person in a robot suit. But, we’ve come a long way, and compared to that it’s going to be very impressive.”

Optimus can now walk around and, if attached to apparatus from the ceiling, do some basic tasks like watering plants:

The prototype of Optimus was reportedly developed in the past six months and Tesla is hoping to get a working design within the “next few months… or years”. The price tag is “probably less than $20,000”.

All the details of Optimus are still vague at the moment, but at least there’s more certainty around the Dojo supercomputer.

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Musk has been one of the most prominent figures to warn that AI is a “danger to the public” and potentially the “biggest risk we face as a civilisation”. In 2017, he even said there was just a “five to 10 percent chance of success [of making AI safe]”.

Speaking about London-based DeepMind in a New York Times interview last year, Musk said: “Just the nature of the AI that they’re building is one that crushes all humans at all games. I mean, it’s basically the plotline in ‘War Games’”.

Unveiling a 5ft 8in AI-powered humanoid robot may seem to contradict Musk’s concerns. However, rather than leave development to parties who he believes would be less responsible, Musk believes Tesla can lead in building ethical AI and robotics.

Musk has form in this area after co-founding OpenAI. The company’s mission statement is: “To build safe Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), and ensure AGI’s benefits are as widely and evenly distributed as possible.”

Of course, it all feels a little like building nuclear weapons to deter them—it’s an argument that’s sure to have some rather passionate views on either side.

During the unveiling of Tesla Bot, Musk was sure to point out that you could easily outrun and overpower it.

Tesla Bot is designed to “navigate through a world built for humans” and carry out tasks that are dangerous, repetitive, or boring. One example task is for the robot to be told to go to the store and get specific groceries.

Of course, all we’ve seen of Tesla Bot at this point is a series of PowerPoint slides (if you forget about the weird dance by a performer dressed as a Tesla Bot … which we’re all trying our hardest to.)

The unveiling of the robot followed a 90-minute presentation about some of the AI upgrades coming to Tesla’s electric vehicles. Tesla Bot is essentially a robot version of the company’s vehicles.

“Our cars are basically semi-sentient robots on wheels,” Musk said. “It makes sense to put that into humanoid form.”

AI Day was used to hype Tesla’s advancements in a bid to recruit new talent to the company. 

On its recruitment page, Tesla wrote: “Develop the next generation of automation, including a general purpose, bi-pedal, humanoid robot capable of performing tasks that are unsafe, repetitive or boring.

“We’re seeking mechanical, electrical, controls and software engineers to help us leverage our AI expertise beyond our vehicle fleet.”

A prototype of Tesla Bot is expected next year, although Musk has a history of delays and showing products well before they’re ready across his many ventures. Musk says that it’s important the new machine is not “super expensive”.

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