Robots in the Kitchen

Synthetic Recipes and Real World Dummies Collide in The New York Times

If you follow me on social media or have read my newsletters for a while, you know how I feel about generative AI. Its existence is predicated on a massive theft of intellectual property and copywritten works (including my books), it’s an enormous waste of finite natural resources, and will only lessen our creativity, our ability to think, to then articulate our thoughts, and will make the world an even dumber place. Does AI have certain areas where it can be useful to humanity? Absolutely. Are any of those areas writing books, doing your homework, creating recipes, or making weird ass images and videos of yourself? No, please be serious. So when I saw this article in The New York Times this week, you know my head exploded.

I'm sorry, what? If I’m spending my hard-earned money to go to a chef’s restaurant, it’s because I want to be dazzled by the talent of people in the kitchen and staff running the show. If the chef can’t be bothered to be creative, why should I be bothered to eat there? The same goes for authors who are letting AI write along with them. I can hear the defenses already but please, save your energy. You are not unlocking new levels of creativity by using AI, you are outsourcing inspiration. Creativity is a muscle that needs to be used and inspiration is found in the journey as much as in the destination. You are taking the art out of the medium and leaving audiences with brainless content, whether we’re talking about recipes, books, or the visual arts. We’re brainless enough as-is, no help is needed. The whole NY Times piece and its examples of AI in the kitchen are dumber than you could imagine.

This is all I think of when people tell me they used ChatGPT

The article begins with Chef Grant Achatz using ChatGPT to create a bunch of fake chefs and then asking it to create recipes that someone with those fake chefs’ backgrounds might dream up. It’s so fucking convoluted that I was embarrassed for Chef Achatz just reading it. He’s planning to serve a nine-course menu with these dishes next year, all AI generated, at his Chicago restaurant, Next. The writer, Peter Wells, presents this information as though readers should be impressed by Chef Achatz’s ingenuity and creativity but all I see is a world-renowned chef refusing to pay for labor. He would rather create fake chefs and promote their work than give the same opportunity to real, hard-working chefs whose lives could be changed by collaborating with him. Why? Because real people need to be paid and egos can’t get bruised by AI talent. The article doesn’t get better from there.

“Look what I made with MindJourneyyyyzzyyzyyzkdgjdskgd”

Wells presents AI in this article as an all-knowing oracle that can get chefs out of a rut; “Cooks, like other humans, are forgetful, distracted and hemmed in by their own experiences. A.I. has its shortcomings, but these aren’t among them.” Generative AI and LLMs in general, are built on the work of humans and then they use all that information as source material for their output. They are as hemmed in by our experience as we are because we are their source of information. It does not have an imagination. AI may be able to make unexpected connections and suggestions, but it is unbound by reality so the quality of those connections, and their truthfulness, are always a gamble. AI is teaching us to trust the appearance of authority and truthfulness instead of us learning to discern what is actually true and what real authority on a subject means. This is a recipe for disaster, in and outside of the kitchen.

That’s not stopping chefs who want to seem like they know everything though. Chef Ned Baldwin says in the article that he used ChatGPT to learn the in-and-outs of sausage making when his first batch didn’t come out right. He could have asked other chefs like the illustrious ones he studied under or read any number of high-quality books on the subject to actually educate himself, but instead of having to admit he didn’t know something to another human, he’d rather ask a robot that’s known to lie.

‘“I think there’s a certain point in your cheffiness where you’re reluctant to be vulnerable and not know something,” he said. But even if your prompts suggest you have the kitchen expertise of a toddler, he said, “ChatGPT will happily answer your question and not judge you.”’

I can’t imagine having so little curiosity in a subject I’ve dedicated my life to that I can’t even ask some damn questions to my peers or pick up a book out of fear of being judged. This man went to Yale folks. Do you think he knows that I’m judging the shit out of him now?

The article ends with Chef Grant Achatz complaining about the kids these days. He says he used to stay up late with his staff after service brainstorming ideas and batting them back and forth but has turned to ChatGPT for that now because young sous chefs are interested in an intellectual debate anymore, “That dialogue is something that simply does not exist anymore and is the lifeblood of progress”. Oh please. If nobody wants to talk to you, maybe look inward because you’re the only thing they all have in common. It sounds much more likely that sous chefs aren’t interested in doing several extra hours of unpaid labor late into the night to help him come up with creative ideas that they’ll ultimately not get credit for, and risk bruising the ego of an influential chef if they don’t agree with him. It’s not that difficult to suss out but hey, I’m not a writer for The New York Times.

I’m honestly surprised so many chefs were willing to give such detailed examples of their unwillingness to do their jobs and hone their craft to a national news organization but I probably shouldn’t be. Ego is a crazy thing and people love to look like early adopters of tech even if they don’t understand it. The more of our humanity, our art, and our basic creativity we farm out to technology like generative AI, the less able we will be to create it in the future. The teachers are already sounding the alarm on what it’s doing to our ability to educate our kids and puff pieces like this aren’t helping. It’s not glamorous or daring to outsource your cognition, it’s lazy. Generative AI is only the future if we let it be. I’m opting out. You can keep your fake chefs and lazy sausage to yourself. And if I want some food made possible by crazy, futuristic technology, I’ll have some Dippin Dots as the lord intended.

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Do you use AI or see your kids using lots of AI? Is it changing your field of work? Do you think I’m wrong as hell? Let’s chat about it in the comments, no bots allowed though.

Tomorrow, paid subscribers are getting a collection of all my favorite pasta salad recipes to get them through the summer. Not on the list? Let’s fix that huh?

xoxo,

Michelle