Time.news – Artificial Intelligence conquers the kitchen. Or take it over. The New York Times reports that the researchers they are using it to create and write recipes, complete with photos and the background of the stoves, replacing the man. With long lists of ingredients, ad hoc measurements, detailed instructions and personalized introductory notes. The advantage is that “they draw on a vast collection of online information on food and cooking”. Big Data Kitchen.
But, the Times asks, can they work? And improve the dining experience handed down for millennia? The answer is that, “as home cooks, professional chefs and food magazine editors know, the ultimate proof for recipes is Thanksgiving dinner, a sprawling and varied occasion upon which high expectations are poured”.
Well, the New York newspaper has thus decided to try AI, through a technology renamed Gpt-3, “to design a holiday menu”, then prepared and presented to a body of tasters: four New York cuisine columnists Times itself. The results, assure the editorial office at 620 Eighth Avenue, they say a lot about the potential of the technology.
The Gpt-3 model is a neutral network, a mathematical system capable of learning skills analyzing huge amounts of dataso one thing is clear: “AI is ready to reshape various fields, from email marketing to computer programming.
Writing recipes is not a common area of studybut a handful of researchers, including a team from MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have begun to explore whether AI can master the techniques, so much so that the result is that “today many AI recipes may seem indistinguishable from those created man-made, ”admitted Janelle Shane, a researcher who runs a blog on machine learning.
The Times reports that to create the Thanksgiving AI menu, the newspaper’s technicians started by introducing themselves to the GPT-3 system, in a “surprisingly human” way and with few technical formalities. But what really happened and how did it proceed? “After logging into GPT-3 on the laptop,” the New York Times reads, “we typed, ‘I am originally from Texas and grew up in an American Indian family. I love spicy flavors, Italian and Thai food and not too sweet desserts. Some ingredients I often cook with are chaat masala, miso, soy sauce, herbs and tomato paste. So we wrote: ‘Show us a Thanksgiving menu made just for us.’ The result, according to the tasters of the Times, was partly satisfactory but it was also observed that “there was no soul” in the food.
The AI systems tested have been more than one on as many recipe variants. However, Gpt-3 could also help customize an existing recipe “by creating less spicy versions or with specific flavors”.