Elon Musk reveals why physical robots matter a lot more than digital AI MUSK: "I sometimes think about dolphins and whales because they can't manipulate things. They don't have hands and fingers and thumbs and stuff. There's a limit to how far, you know, how much intelligence can you actually bring to bear?" "Dolphins and whales are actually very intelligent, but because they can't manipulate complex objects, I think that actually made the value of intelligence much less. To your point, once you have a robot that can manipulate atoms, can shape objects, the value of the intelligence becomes exponentially greater." "Because it can do things. You know, it could have a science lab and run experiments and try to understand the nature of the universe."