The Dishwasher Dilemma

The dishwasher might be the most divisive object we’ve ever put on the site. It’s one of those machines that feels simple at first glance — a box that sprays hot water around — but the deeper you look, the harder it becomes to pin down. It performs a task humans used to do manually. It senses water levels, soil levels, and load conditions. It follows a program that adapts in small but meaningful ways. If you squint a little, you start to see the shape of something more complicated.

But does that give it agency? Does it behave in a way that we’d comfortably call intelligent? This is where the arguments usually begin. A lot of us feel that a robot needs some spark of autonomy — not full consciousness, but an ability to react to the world with something more than rigid steps on a timer. A dishwasher, to many, is still just a clever arrangement of pumps, heaters, and valves carrying out an unchanging script.

Yet the story isn’t that simple. Modern dishwashers have “fuzzy logic” cycles that change mid-wash based on how dirty the water becomes. They can extend, shorten, or modify their behavior without direct input. That’s not awareness, but it’s not nothing either. When a machine evaluates a condition and adjusts itself, even in a narrow way, the floor beneath the definition of “robot” starts to wobble a bit.

That’s what makes the dishwasher such a fascinating case. It sits right on the border — familiar enough to seem mundane, complex enough to challenge our assumptions. Depending on how you define autonomy, intelligence, or even the word “decision,” you can argue it either way. And that tension is exactly what keeps the debate alive. After all, part of the fun of this site is exploring those gray areas together, one everyday object at a time.