Washing machines or the internet—which one actually changed the world more?
The answer involves 25 trillion hours, and it changes how we see AI.
3 minutes. One calculation that reframes everything.
AI & The Art of the Possible — Exploring AI beyond the hype
Hosted by Chance Sassano
Episode 1 – The Washing Machine Moment Full Transcript
We think we know what’s changing the world.
What if we’re looking in the wrong place?
I’m chance, and this is the art of the Possible where I explore AI beyond the hype
Episode one, The Washing Machine Moment
I came across this idea from economist Ha-joon Chang. That’s kind of crazy. He says washing machines transform society more than the internet did.
I thought that’s absurd. The more I sat with it, the more it clicked. Before washing machines, someone in your household spends an entire day doing laundry, eight, 10 hours a week. Washing machines eliminated that.
What did the internet do? Made information instant. Made communication seamless. Huge deal. But did it fundamentally give you back a full day of your life every single week?
Not really. You know what? Let’s actually calculate this. I asked AI how much time washing machines have saved humanity over the last 100 years.
25.3 trillion hours saved. That’s 36 million human lifetimes, or 2.9 billion years of continuous time just from washing machines. And yes, I had AI, show me the math on that. Full breakdown in the show notes.
This is exactly Chang’s point. The washing machine didn’t just make laundry easier. It fundamentally restructured how humanity spends its time.
25 trillion hours redirected from washing machines to literally anything else. Business, education, the arts. Here’s the wild part. The time savings accelerated dramatically in 1945. Washing machines saved 13.5 billion hours globally by twenty twenty five, six hundred and twenty 4 billion hours per year.
So here’s what I keep thinking about. What if AI is our generation’s washing machine? Not because it’s smarter than us, but because it’s giving us back time. Take me. I used to spend hours, literally hours, staring at a blank page trying to start a first draft, a blog post, an email, this podcast script. AI gets me past that paralysis in minutes.
Those hours I get them back, and I’m not alone. Developers who spent half their day on boilerplate code? Seconds, now. Researchers buried in hundreds of papers? AI points them straight to what matters most. We’re not measuring time savings yet. Not like the way we can when we look back at washing machines, but it’s happening right now.
In 1920, nobody was calculating how many hours washing machines were saving us. They just knew they suddenly had time to do other things. We’re at that moment with.
So here’s the question. If AI gives us back even a fraction of what washing machines did 25 trillion hours, what becomes possible, not what AI can do, what we can do with the time it gives us back, that’s The Art of the Possible.
I’m Chance Sassano, and thank you for listening to The Art of the Possible. If this got you thinking, share it with someone who’d appreciate it. Big shout out to Martin Salgado for helping me get this off the ground.
Next episode, they say AI came out of nowhere, an overnight sensation. Yeah. It only took 70 years. The Overnight Success Moment on The Art of the Possible.
