lobsters score: 2 · tags: philosophy
Mnyeh. Isaac Asimov, who invented the term robotics, wrote that a robot is a mobile computerized tool that resembles a human.
At one point, Asimov hypothesized that the cost of a general purpose computer (what he meant was borderline AGI) would be high, so it makes more sense to own one which can operate all the tools that a human can use, rather than putting computers and motors into brooms, vacuums, automobiles, stoves, dishwashers, HVAC systems, bulldozers, and so forth.
He failed to see that not-even-vaguely-AGI computers would be extremely cheap, and it is much easier to automate an extremely limited domain (dishwasher) than to employ a robot to wash your dishes, drive your car and mow your lawn.
Nevertheless: if it’s not human-sized and human-shaped, it’s not a robot. It could be a Giant Robot, it could be a robotic vacuum-cleaner, it could be a home automation system with a voice interface running on an old laptop, but these things are not robots.
A robot is a general purpose, mobile, computerized tool that resembles a human and can do many things autonomously. Anything else requires qualification. Fictionally, C3PO is a robot, R2D2 is a little-person-in-a-wheelchair robot, and HAL9000 is not a robot. Skynet is not a robot, the Terminators are.
incidentally, every dish-cleaning function in a modern dishwasher can be handled by purely mechanical systems that do not need to be Turing complete.
score 1 · canonical
I grew up without a dishwasher and one of my chores was washing the dishes. Now that I have a dishwashing machine in my house, I always refer to it as a robot. My favorite robot.
A question of fond of posing is: what household robot would you be willing to trade your dishwasher for? What kind of household robotics or automation would be so good and so valuable that you’d choose to hand wash all your dishes in exchange for having it in your home?
score 1 · canonical
A lawn maintenance robot [1]. One that could not only mow the lawn, but pull weeds (and triming the bushes would be a bonus, but not a requirement). With only two people living in the house, hand washing dishes wouldn’t be that much of a chore (as I already hand-wash most of the cooking tools since I use them so often).
[1] I live in South Florida. A xeriscape here (not necessarily in the “use less water” meaning, but more of a “use native vegetation”) would require turning our lawn into a flooded grassland (the Everglades) I don’t think our neighbors would appreciate that.
score 1 · canonical
I am the loophole (living alone matters in that though). I do not live on takeout, I eat hot food made out of shelf-stable ingredients most of the days! Buuut I have a glass pot. I throw the grains in, and boil them. I eat from the pot, leave nothing behind, at most vaguely rinse it (sometimes not even that), and that’s fine with me. Average amount of dishes: less than one item per meal!
score 1 · canonical
Doubleplusgood, this is something that’s disturbed me for ages.
And of course the modern dishwasher was invented by Josephine Cochrane.
score 1 · canonical