What my washing machine taught me about human-machine collaboration

Automation has made our lives easier, but it should complement human skills and not seek to displace them.

- Lim Sun Sun

The year 2025 began in a banal, yet deeply reflective way for me. My washing machine mysteriously broke down mid-cycle and unable to schedule any repairs until after the New Year holiday – I had no choice but to wash my laundry by hand. As I rinsed and wrung each piece of clothing in a large basin of water, I found myself literally elbow-deep in thoughts about automation, questioning the future of human-machine collaboration. Such is the blessing of automation that you take it for granted. That is, until it fails.

There is in fact much that a malfunctioning washing machine can teach us about the capabilities of humans and technology, and their implications for automation. These distinctions between the relative strengths of me and the machine bring to mind Moravec's paradox. This principle postulates that tasks which machines can do easily, humans struggle with and vice versa. Conversely, actions that even toddlers do unthinkingly, machines are still incapable of approximating. The latter require fine motor and cognitive skills coupled with sophisticated hand-eye coordination that roboticists are working hard to integrate but have yet to reach mass market applications.

Whereas my washing machine can effortlessly spin-dry 7kg of clothing, roughly a 15kg wet load at a violent speed, it does so indiscriminately, treating all the clothes as an undifferentiated mass. I, on the other hand, strain to even lift such a load but can effortlessly identify the more delicate fabrics and gently press them dry while wringing tougher garments with vigour. I am also able to disentangle pieces of clothing from each other to rinse them individually, and to carefully scrub out any stains I spot. These are things that washing machines just cannot do. Yet.