Like many homeowners, I finally broke down and broke out a few dollars to renovate my downstairs. It was 2021. Not a good year for more than one reason. But, for a while now, we have enjoyed our “new” downstairs.

In the renovation, we purchased all new kitchen appliances. Very advanced models, WiFi connected, quiet, and fully featured. However, one appliance seems to have a mind of its own. It is the dishwasher.

Over the past months, we’ve had numerous occasions to power cycle the dishwasher to break it out of a non-stop beep bop whistle flashy lights mode. Sometimes it happens, but of late, it seems to be rarer. Unless the cook has been power cycling behind my back. Which she probably has.

More recently, a distinct whine has been heard. It started faintly, but grew in volume and duration. Now, it is a non-stop electromechanical sound. You just know this is not good.

Since the chief cook is now required to be the bottle washer too, I decided to investigate. In my new role as a retired engineer, I have taken tasks like this on with more patience and no curse words. I try very hard to just do enough to diagnose and repair. Instead of pulling the dishwasher out of the cabinet area, and poking around various high-tech and low-tech subassemblies, I took things slowly.

First, I made sure the drain was free from debris and that the dishwasher was able to pull water out of the cabinet and into the pipes. No issues there. Having had to repair the drain pump before, when a tiny metal pivot pin fell out of a cheese grater, I was hoping the drain motor did work well.

Now, with the noise still obvious, I decided to look at the circulation pump. Inside the cabinet, I took out the racks, the four-arm spinner, the drain screen and panel, and then look at the central water area. Nothing. No dirt, slime, grit, anything. I even was able to rotate the pump motor from above, just a bit. And best of all, I did NOT drop any screws into the drain sump!

Now what? As my favorite and first boss Kenneth Cunningham of Cloverleaf Servicenter would say “I’ll tell you whut…” Kenneth could always tell a story with a grin that exposed a few ounces of Redman tobacco. In today’s world, where I can’t call Kenneth to ask for advice, I decided to try ChatGPT.

I’ve been using ChatGPT with great success lately. Working on some big datasets, analyzing those columns for their possible effect, I’ve found AI can certainly write scripts to allow the computer to do the simple tasks like deleting columns, creating new columns, evaluating entries against numerical limits, that sort of thing. It’s been so helpful, to have time to think about the data, to model it, and to get answers from it rather than ponder how to write code in a new computer language. Old dog, new tricks? Not gonna happen. But, with ChatGPT, the old dog is definitely doing new tricks.

So I inquired of ChatGPT what might be making a dishwasher noise. It’s a computer, but it is much like Hal from 2001 A Space Odyssey. It writes back to you as if it is a person. Sometimes I even find myself saying please and thank you to a computer. That I pay a monthly fee to do what I tell it to do!

ChatGPT, in a flash, suggests a few possibilities. Then it says “or you can upload a short audio clip…and I’ll identify the sound source for you.” As John McEnroe famously said “You cannot be serious!”

Having put the dishwasher back together, I pulled the iPhone out, and told Sandy The Little White Dog to be quiet. I started the dishwasher up, and hit the record button on the iPhone Voice Memo app. After the initial sump clearing noise, the offending whine started. I then made another recording of just the whine sound.

Back at the MacBook Pro M4Pro with 48GB of RAM, I discovered those files in my iCloud account. Being .m4a file type, I was not hopeful that ChatGPT could “listen” to them. Sure enough, I had to learn how to use Apple Music to import and convert the .m4a to .mp3. Trivial, but certainly silly, for Apple to be so provincial about sound files. At least Apple has the convert utility inside the Music app, and I don’t have to purchase software.

Back to ChatGPT. I uploaded the first sound file. ChatGPT correctly interpreted the dishwasher operation cycle. It knew that the first sound was the sump drain pump motor, and the second sound was the circulation pump motor. Wow! I then uploaded the second file, of just the circulation pump motor. ChatGPT, in literally two seconds, presented me with a full analysis of the sound in both frequency and time domains. It even knew, from the frequency, that the pump motor is the inverter type (so says the dishwasher door, on a spiffy badge glued thereon.). How in the world?

The AI even knows the motor part number…

So, with a ten-year inverter motor warranty (so says the dishwasher badge), I wrote the manufacturer a nice e-mail. I included the .mp3 file and the ChatGPT analysis and conclusion. I hope they send me a new motor. It would be nice if they send a repairman to install the motor too. We’ll see.

I am amazed at the utility of ChatGPT. How in the world can it have such insight from information found on the WWW? How can it know the frequency domain of an inverter motor? How can it differentiate between a drain pump motor and a circulation pump motor? Who told “it” these facts about two different motors on a common dishwasher? Who gave it a language interface that I can understand? Who knew it needed to create graphs to convey facts visually? How did it know to analyze a sound file in two “dimensions” and show both to me?

I haven’t given ChatGPT a name yet. Hal is already taken. And Hal was mean. Alexa and Siri are in widespread use. Maybe someday I’ll choose a name for it. I remember how hard it was to choose my younger daughter’s name. We wanted it to be perfect. For ChatGPT, I just need a moniker. The more I think about it, the more I think “Isaac” might be ideal. Mr. Newton was no intellectual slouch. He knew more about more than anyone. I think ChatGPT may someday surpass even his vast factual knowledge.