Memoirs of a Space Traveler

What Hacker News says

1. nosianuApr 2025
   > I want Al to do my laundry

   Stanisław Lem has told us about the grave dangers of such a development decades ago.

   This is a good summary, summary quoted below, full article linked on the page (requires a login - but reading Lem's story itself is better than reading about it anyway):

   https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1981/11/30/the-washing-ma...

   "Shortly after Ijon Tichy's return from the Eleventh Voyage, newspapers made much of the competition between two washing machine manufacturers. They were producing robot washers of increasing complexity. They came out with sex-pot washers, washers that seduced women, carried on intelligent conversations, etc. A man named Cathodius Mattrass started a religious cult called the cybernophiles, which believed the Creator had intended humans to be a means toward creating electrobrains more perfect than itself. He turned himself into a giant robot and established himself in outer space. A series of court cases ensued. Finally, a special plenary session was held to decide if Mattrass was a planet, a human, a robot, or what, and Tichy was invited to attend. Suddenly, after much argument and deliberation, cries rang out that electronic brains disguised as lawers were present. The Chairman went through the room with a compass and an x-ray machine was brought in. Eventually everyone was kicked outNthey were found to be made of all sorts of thingsNcotton wool, machinery of all kinds. Ijon was the only human, and then he turned the compass on the chairman and found that he, too, was a robot. He kicked out the chairman, paced the empty hall for a while, and then went home."

   One problem is, you have to make them into real capable robots, since you want them to pick up what needs washing by themselves. That then leads to feature-creep and ever increasing abilities that have little or nothing to do with washing, and it escalates from there. The story also had gangs of abandoned intelligent washing machines robbing parts from still owned and in use ones, and more.

   The story is part of "Memoirs of a Space Traveler: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy"

   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/88321.Memoirs_of_a_Space...

   The original Polish book was first published in 1957.

   Show morethread
2. thro1Mar 2022
   Just a warning: professor A Dońda in the book “The Memoirs of a Space Traveler: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy” (1973, by Stanislaw Lem) made already an experiment in such matter: while transforming information into mass he reached critical mass - what resulted in the disappearance of the contents of all computer data banks and collapse of human civilization.
   thread