Back in 2017, I read a very exciting piece of news that had the potential to turn my life around.
At the time, I was laser-focused on ignoring the Everest-sized pile of clothes on the ironing board. Like all world-class procrastinators, I knew now would be the perfect time to have a meander through my phone to check what breaking news I may have missed in the fifteen minutes it had taken me to lug all the clean laundry upstairs. It was then, like a sign from the very heavens, that I found an item by NewScientist that carried this promising headline: “This handy robot will iron your clothes so you don't have to”.
A robot that irons? To be alive to see such a thing!
“The robot, called TEO, is 1.8 metres tall and weighs about 80 kilograms,” boasted NewScientist. “Since it came into being at the Carlos III University of Madrid, Spain, in 2012, TEO has learned to climb stairs and open doors. Now full-on domestication seems within its reach.”
Hah! Full-on domestication my foot. It’s been seven years, and I'm still waiting for TEO to knock on my door and get to work. Not that I have any room for him. I live in a house in England, meaning I live in a place the size of a large tea cosy. I am too scared to open my wardrobe, because whenever I do, everything inside makes a bid for freedom. I really don’t have any space for TEO to camp in, bless his little ironing heart.
What we really need: robots, not Chat GPT
Naturally, I am not alone aching to be wooed by people-pleasing robots. “You know what the biggest problem with pushing all-things-AI is?” mused author Joanna Maciejewska on X. “I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.”
Unfortunately, this is an author talking, not a scientist, so we are no closer to recruiting robot handymen than we are to receiving a letter from Hogwarts. Joanna may have excellent ideas, tech-wise, but she is too busy writing to also save the world. She doesn’t have time in her busy schedule to build a robot that can wash the pressure cooker from last night's dinner. And no, a dishwasher isn’t in the same league. I have had three dishwashers die on me due to various ailments, and they are extremely fussy if you put in a potato peeler the wrong way. 'People-pleasing' is not one of their best features.
And for washing machines, I am afraid laundry technology seems to have plateaued at the ‘adding shiny buttons’ phase. Washing machine people, I am on my knees as I ask you this: where is the function that will fold your clothes and put them away? Where is the self-emptying setting? I have a strong suspicion that laundry tech people are not unlike students staring at their essay and changing the font just to spice things up a bit. Adding fancy buttons in polished chrome may allow your washing machine to win the Washine Machine Fashion Show of the year, but ultimately, no one cares. Except maybe other leading figures in the washing machine sector.
The other side of the story
In the defence of AI, it has been known to dip a tentative toe in exciting world of housework. We have cute little robot vacuum cleaners that are forever getting stuck in corners (or wandering off into the wilderness if someone has left the door open), and I have a friend who has a robot mop she has lovingly christened ‘Dreamy’. But these robot vacuums and mops still require human intervention. Dreamy, for example, is unable to replenish her water supply. Such a thing, I’m afraid, whilst excellent in principle, is of little use to me. The only kind of human intervention I can get on board with is saying the words, “Dreamy, do be a dear and clean the upstairs bathroom, please. Thanks, love.” If I am going to be changing her water and plugging her in and picking up chairs so she can mop properly, I might as well do it myself.
More than just cleaning
As far as wish fulfilment goes, technology has taken great leaps and bounds well outside the limits of ‘wildest dreams’ territory. (Or at least my wildest dreams, which, at the time, followed the ‘I wish my Walkman battery would last longer’ theme.) For example, back when I was painstakingly winding back a Backstreet Boys tape with a pencil in 1999, I never, ever imagined that one day I would be so sophisticated I would never look at BSB again, and that I would have all this sophisticated excellence in my actual pocket, via a magical thing called Spotify.
If I may speak in defence of the mighty Walkman, though, it had the advantage of withstanding repeated smacking. Sometimes, if you smacked it hard enough, it would even speed up your tape and play it at a higher pitch. It was a sturdy, robust companion, unlike my current phone. My phone has survived many a fall (it has to, if it is to spend a lifetime with me and pockets the size of a thimble), but it doesn’t have a hope of reaching the lofty heights of my Walkman (may it rest in peace).
Nevertheless, Spotify aside, there remains a large void in my life that is definitely NOT filled by scientists finding yet another planet a gazillion miles in the outer space outback. It is a void that can only be filled by the Holy grail of technology, the only thing we all want deep down in our souls: an obedient printer.
Like many of you, printers and I have had a very chequered past. I am of the view that printers were invented in a special branch of hell, and the printers in my life have done absolutely nothing to alter this theory. I once had a printer that would print only in pink. My current printer only works if it is cradled a certain way. I am not making this up.
So my message to scientists is this: please, please, please, if we cannot have robots that serve us, when you are out there exploring these wonderful new planets, can you bring us back a printer that listens? Thank you very much.
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