The podcast “Robot or Not” have been trying to decide whether various things are robots for over a decade now. I feel like they did do dishwashers at some point. www.theincomparable.com/robot/

Holy shit, John Siracusa is involved in that? That’s gonna be IN DEPTH

https://www.theincomparable.com/robot/212/

They talk more about the various ways to prep plates for a dishwasher and not the canonical question, but it’s clear that (by their definition) a dishwasher is not a robot.

Is there a difference between a machine and a robot? I would say yes.

A dishwasher to me would be a machine, similar to a air-conditioner or a car for example.

Yea I’d say robot is more dexterous, moves more. Machines are more stationary. A mechanical arm that puts car parts on a manufacturing line, thats a robot to me.

A coffee maker or an ice maker, those are machines.

a device that automatically performs complicated, often repetitive tasks

Under this definition, a washing machine is a robot.

According to this space-age video from the Handy (Jam) Corporation, a spring is a robut

archive.org/details/LeaveItt1940

a machine is a robot when it makes us sit with uncomfortable truths about ourselves

By this definition, both my washing machine and my dish washer are robots, and so is my bathroom scale

As a meme, this is a good article.

As a genuine discussion on the definition of Robot, this is stupid af.

FWIW - literally all things are social constructs if your definition of social construct is “a category of things that includes/excludes things based on our perception & interaction with it”