In her article, Ilse discussed how creatures approach Sisyphean tasks, tasks which are futile from the very beginning. As in the mythological case of Sisyphus, who rolled a boulder up the hill only to lose it before reaching the top and start over; over and over again.

Ilse mentions several everyday examples of, what she considers are, such tasks. Doing the laundry, dusting the floors. All of these tasks are likely to reappear soon or even before their completion.

There's a slight issue with Ilse's approach though. If we decide to follow such viewpoint, everything besides projects with a clear, measurable end goal (like researching the Nuclear Fusion, reaching a previously undiscovered place or developing vaccine for a novel virus), are essentially endless, repetitive tasks.

In fact, most of both people and automata work most of their lives doing the same task every day, often for the rest of their lives. For a dishwasher there always will be a new batch of dirty cups, for a RaDaR engineer there will arrive a new batch of groundtruthing reports, and even if the oncologist will manage to fully cure his patient, there is already a group

As Ilse mentions herself, we know there will be consequences; the dirty laundry will pile up, and it's not like we have infinite supply of new clothes, we need to wash them in order to reuse them. I would not, contrary to Ilse, consider susceptibility to behavioural conditioning by punishment such innate characteristic of creatures, one differentiating them from the machines.

After all, it's not like far reaching consequences are ununderstandable for machines. Automata are usually designed to perform in the most optimal way possible, therefore, provided they have enough computing power to process possible outcomes, they will never allow dirty clothing to pile up forever. Similarly to Ilse herself, they should be able to figure out they'll be better off doing the wash regularly.

One thing all of the so far aforementioned tasks (except the Sisyphean example of pushing up the boulder) share one thing in common. Despite being repetitive end endless, they all create value during each iteration. Every time oncologist cured someone, the world is one cancer-free person ahead. Every time the engineer went through the pile of reports, his understanding of the system expands and the developed product gets better; and each time Ilse does her laundry, she gains few sets of clean clothing.

What is even quite intuitive, is that machines do not understand the issue of pointlessness. When asked to push a boulder up the hill or clean an awfully soiled stable, a machine should approach these tasks with similar enthusiasm. Humans though, while likely not very delighted with an idea of cleaning the stable, if asked to push the boulder would immediately ask "for what"?

This where the ability to recognise pointlessness makes night and day difference between man and machine. Human indeed expect to see a point in something, otherwise they're reluctant to participate. If pushing the boulder up the hill could generate power for a region, people would likely be very motivated to do it (especially during an energy crisis, like at the time of writing of this article). Creatures are able and willing to take part in any operation, no matter how hard and repulsive it is, so long as they see a point.

In fact, many people pushed gigantic boulders up high hills at many points of history. Pyramids were raised with labour of living creatures; while here the point could be either the love for the pharaoh or the fear of execution, there was one. For a machine, it's all the same. It would push the boulder regardless of the point, whether that'd be for the good of everyone around it or to avoid death for disobeying the slave-owners. Machines do what they are able to, creatures do what's worthwhile.