One small step for man, one giant leap for A.I.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

According to the NY Times, A.I. is now writing recipes.  As well as providing backstory and computer generated photographs of the finished dishes.  It was only a matter of time.

 

 

[gfweb]

I can believe that. Esp for stuff that appears on Twitter from the cooking magazines. Usage errors and general lack of thought stand out. 

[Anna N]

11 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

According to the NY Times, A.I. is now writing recipes.  As well as providing backstory and computer generated photographs of the finished dishes.  It was only a matter of time.

 

 

But would we notice? According to an excerpt from an essay published in The Guardian, most of us who purchased a cookbook make  2 recipes from it. 
From here:

 

And then there is this which is an extract from the above essay. 

 

Culinary Pleasures, Nicola Humble includes a pertinent story from the 1940s when a magazine inadvertently published a recipe with a fatally poisonous combination of ingredients. She doesn’t go into detail on what that might have been – a rhubarb leaf stew? A leftover rice dish involving sautéed autumn skullcap mushrooms? No doubt reeling, the editors notified the police and desperately tried to recall copies, then waited anxiously for reports of people falling ill. They waited … and waited. But none came. The editors could only conclude that not one of their readers had actually cooked from the recipe.

Edited November 5, 2022 by Anna N
To show a little more respect to a newspaper. (log)

[Katie Meadow]

I could see a robot being a good foraging companion. Years ago I found the nicest patch of black chanterelles, and nobody else seemed to know about it. Unfortunately they grew very happily among poison oak. I could get a case of chanterelles but paid the price with a case of its bedding. But recipes? It might be hard to distinguish the AI ones from many of the weird ones created by "adventurous" humans whose numbers are legion. 

 

As for cookbooks I rarely buy them any more. I fit right in  to the demographic who finds maybe two keepers in any given book. Better to get the book from the library and copy those, color and all.

[ElsieD]

Good article.  I have a few books like that.  Sometimes I'll buy a cookbook because I think it will be great (e.g. I have one on risotto) and find there is not one recipe that appeals to me.  I'm not sure why it's still on my bookshelf.

[Anna N]

I do very little cooking these days, but I still buy the odd cookbook because I do enjoy reading them. 
Mostly, I like to jump on board @blue_dolphin’s bandwagon. Just a quick tally suggests that for the last two cookbooks she has acquired she has cooked 10+ recipes. I am sure in the statistical world she would be considered an outlier, but I’m so glad that she’s here. (I am still resisting Falastin, but only barely.) 

Edited November 5, 2022 by Anna N (log)

[blue_dolphin]

For those interested in the NYT article mentioned in the original post, you can read it and see some of the AI generated photos side by side with the dishes as prepared in their test kitchen here: Can A.I. Write Recipes Better Than Humans? We Put It to the Ultimate Test.

The AI recipes themselves appear in this story: A.I. Wrote These Thanksgiving Recipes. Would You Make Them?

[kayb]

17 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:

For those interested in the NYT article mentioned in the original post, you can read it and see some of the AI generated photos side by side with the dishes as prepared in their test kitchen here: Can A.I. Write Recipes Better Than Humans? We Put It to the Ultimate Test.

The AI recipes themselves appear in this story: A.I. Wrote These Thanksgiving Recipes. Would You Make Them?

With photos. They looked pretty awful, and apparently tasted the same.

[Anna N]

Thanks for the link to the article and especially to the recipes @blue_dolphin. I think the green bean recipe would pass muster, but not much else. 
It seems as if the gremlins got into the recipe for the naan stuffing and didn’t know where to stop with the dried fruit! 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

1 hour ago, kayb said:

With photos. They looked pretty awful, and apparently tasted the same.

 

Well, yes, but the A.I. generated pictures looked delicious.

 

[BetD]

“The robots are coming for many of our jobs, but not mine!”   😆

 

Watch the video… 

Edited November 5, 2022 by BetD (log)

[AlaMoi]

I've seen a lot of recipes on the web that look like they were written by a computer with no taste bytes.

[gfweb]

On 11/5/2022 at 11:08 AM, blue_dolphin said:

For those interested in the NYT article mentioned in the original post, you can read it and see some of the AI generated photos side by side with the dishes as prepared in their test kitchen here: Can A.I. Write Recipes Better Than Humans? We Put It to the Ultimate Test.

The AI recipes themselves appear in this story: A.I. Wrote These Thanksgiving Recipes. Would You Make Them?

 

Those recipes read like half of the posts on facebook.

[Margaret Pilgrim]

I don't like the concepts as suggested by recipe titles.    Wouldn't try them were they created by humans.

[liuzhou]

I don't see thls as much of an AI breakthrough. However useful or useless, AI should be able to break down recipe structure to a few simple steps. Most recipes have the same basic structure. Program in a few steps or procedures to avoid and bingo. It will come up with something. There are much  more difficult things to teach computers.

 

The problem is getting it to come up with anything worth eating that hasn't been done before (If it hasn't been done before there is probably a good reason). That is much more difficult. Even the best chefs find it difficult.

 

I'd be astonished if this is really the first time anyone has tried to produce a computerised recipe generator. Previous effort have probably been discreetly forgotten. I think my mate Dave tried on his Commodore 64.

Edited November 7, 2022 by liuzhou (log)

[lemniscate]

This article just looks like a re-work of the old played out internet meme "nailed it" from a decade ago.   There is truly nothing new under the sun.

[blue_dolphin]

14 hours ago, Margaret Pilgrim said:

I don't like the concepts as suggested by recipe titles.    Wouldn't try them were they created by humans.

 

Given the information that Priya primed the system with, I thought the recipe titles were rather the best part of what it coughed up! 

The pumpkin spice chaat sounds like it could have possibilities.  Maybe small cubes of pumpkin, roasted with some of those spices and tossed with the fresh herbs, peanuts and lime juice?  The use of canned pumpkin doomed this one. 

Green beans with miso and sesame seeds sounds fine to me.

Naan stuffing has a lot of potential and I think it could work but naan is so variable from big airy poofs to much flatter and denser breads that it would be a nightmare to develop a recipe that would work across the board.  The AI recipe, however, failed on so many other points, bread variability was the very least of its issues!  

The name of the cranberry sauce recipe, "Cranberry Sauce That’s Not Too Sweet and a Little Spiced," is, laughably, precisely what Priya requested.  It's not an engaging name and wouldn't really draw me in, even though it's also what I aim for when making cranberry sauce.  

The name of the turkey recipe appeals to me.  Not something I'd want to make traditional gravy but it sounds a good fit for the rest of the dishes.  Sounds like that one might have worked out pretty well if not for the instruction to cook to 180°F!

And the cake, with the enthusiastic header note, sounds like something I'd try. 

 

26 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

I'd be astonished if this is really the first time anyone has tried to produce a computerised recipe generator. Previous effort have probably been discreetly forgotten. I think my mate Dave tried on his Commodore 64.

I'm not as on top of things as you are, but what seems a tiny bit different from previous examples I've seen is the whole package of recipes complete with titles, personalized header notes and photos of the finished dishes.  

[liuzhou]

1 minute ago, blue_dolphin said:

personalized header notes

 

fake personalised header notes

 

Quote

“This roasted turkey recipe is inspired by the flavors of my childhood.” (It was not.)

 

Titles are easy. The program 'read' thousands of recipes for cranberry sauce. 99% were probably titled cranberry sauce. What did it come up with?

 

Photos would be the easy part. There is a huge industry dedicated to making fake 'photographs' of dishes. It's called advertising. Then there is the whole movie industry's fake images.

[blue_dolphin]

5 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

 

fake personalised header notes

 

 

Titles are easy. The program 'read' thousands of recipes for cranberry sauce. 99% were probably titled cranberry sauce. What did it come up with?

 

Photos would be the easy part. There is a huge industry dedicated to making fake 'photographs' of dishes. It's called advertising. Then there is the whole movie industry's fake images.

See?  Like I said, I’m not as on top of things as you are!

[Anna N]

24 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:

photos of the finished dishes

Looking at the photographs of the cake, I would have to say that this is about as realistic as most recipes get for so many of us!

[Katie Meadow]

Priya's first mistake was not programming the AI recipes to omit the words "pumpkin spice."