If This Restaurant With an AI-Chef Makes Better Food Than Human Chefs... That's Gonna Be a Real Bummer
Dexerto – AI – artificial intelligence – has been used in a number of different fields over the years. It’s been used in car manufacturing for quite some time, pairing with robots to replace humans when it comes to installing doors and even welding other parts together.
It has also started making its way into kitchens. There are robo-kitchens out there where all the food is prepared by a bot without much, or any, help from humans.
Now, a five-star restaurant in Dubai is taking things another step further, using AI to curate its menu. But don’t worry, it won’t be the one cooking your meal.
That’s right, WOOHOO, a restaurant that is opening in Dubai in September, is going to start using AI to take point on its menu, figuring out service, and deciding on the vibe of things. It would make Richie totally pointless in The Bear, basically.
According to Ahmet Oytun Cakir, one of WOOHOO’s founders, the aptly named Aiman is “trained on decades of food science research, molecular composition data and over a thousand recipes from cooking traditions around the world.”
There's no way. Even after scouring all the food journals in the world, reviewing endless human surveys and reviews, researching every unique flavor combination available on the internet... all of that couldn't possibly make up for the fact that AI doesn't have taste buds, right? If AI is somehow able to out-recipe a real-life human chef... that would be so fucked up.
That's not something we're going to have the self-control to just not capitalize on either. It's hard enough to have morals in the face of money. It's one thing to say no to cutting half your human workforce because ChatGPT can do their jobs in a fraction of the time. I mean, at the end of the day, we aren't going to be able to say no to that either. But turning down cheap food that tastes objectively better because AI came up with the recipe? No way. If there's one thing Americans have even worse self-control over than money, it's food. You've seen how fat this country is. People are literally using Klarna to pay off delivery hibachi in four weekly installments. Or they'll go broke paying for miracle drugs that trick their minds into not craving food. If we get to a point where a restaurant is pumping out affordable meals because AI is developing cheap food combinations that outpace the best chefs the world who charge $100 a plate. We don't stand a chance in that department.
As Chef Aiman won’t be doing any of the food prep or chopping up pieces of your meal, it will still need humans to operate
“Human cooking will not be replaced, but we believe (Aiman) will elevate the ideas, creativity,” Oytun Cakir, one of the creators, told Reuters.
How sad would that be for a chef? To be bossed around in the kitchen by a computer. It's like the plot of Ratatouille, except not even a little bit cute. I wish nothing but the worst things in the world for Chef Aiman and the people in Dubai attempting to get rich off this concept. I hope he has a full-blown AI meltdown as he attempts to make some bullshit coffee flavored pasta dish. That there's simply way too much information and conflicting food opinions on the internet that he short circuits, and the computer he's running on blows up their entire kitchen. I'm NOT going to say, "even if it means people die"... but for the good of all things that are human... there's just some things we can't let AI win at.
I thought the other day when I read about a fully AI-band, that music would be the saddest thing to lose to the robots. But food is right up there with it. I might be time we start fighting back with fake news. AI is smart, so I'm not sure how we would be able to flood the internet with bad information that people would know is wrong, but would still fool AI. Maybe through the use of captchas somehow? Apparently computers have no fucking idea which 3 of these 9 images contain a bridge, so maybe if we programmed all our websites with those types of security measures, but instead of blocking their access all together, it switches up the contents of the web page to contain bogus info. We gotta try something. Maybe not for everything. But for uniquely human things like music and food, things that AI doesn't even have the capacity to enjoy, it would be a travesty if AI was better than us in those departments.
You can have your data entry jobs and your autonomous vehicles. If AI is able to come up with life-saving medical advances, that's great. For the love of God AI, PLEASE find a way to provide better, cheaper healthcare than what humans have come up with. But not food. Not music. And not... whatever other things that I can't think of right now. But I'll them know when I see it.