Adventures with AI: Here’s what happened when I ate a three course meal designed by artificial intelligence
Enter Hell’s Kitchen
L’entree
Access to GPT-3 remains prohibitively pricey for most, but the nutritional boffins atRefluxgatekindly provided me with a selection of its recipes.
For my starter, I whipped up a plate of honey and soy-glazed vegetables.
The model suggested every ingredient you’d expect from such a dish — except for the vegetables.
Thank the Kitchen Gods it recommended serving this monstrosity with rice:
The dish was gloopy and overpowering but somehow palatable. Certainly not something I’d ever cook again, but if I were the last man on Earth and it was the last food on Earth, and the future of the human race depended on us? I’d probably eat my own foot.
Perhaps I’m being unfair. A steady diet of fast food and cigarettes may have rendered my tastebuds incapable of appreciating GPT-3’s subtle flavors. Have I judged the model too harshly?
I asked someone with a more sophisticated palate: Ellen Parr, the head chef of London restaurantLucky & Joy.
She was not impressed:
Still, it was edible enough to give me hope for my main course: a GPT-3-generated tomato sauce, served on a Tom-generated bed of tagliatelle.
Le plat principal
I like my meals like I like my stories: with a beginning, middle, and end. But this main course made me wish I could skip to the epilogue.
There’s no polite way of saying this: it looks like a turd. One of those really disgusting turds that make you question your life choices.
In fairness, it tasted better than it looked — but not by much. GPT-3 recommended so much raw garlic I felt like I was eating a vampire’s nightmare. On the plus side, the garlic suppressed the flavor of the undercooked tomatoes.
Parr spotted some other dubious tips in the recipe:
There were further shortcomings in GPT-3’s other recipes. They were often hard to follow, lacked attention to detail, and sometimes suggested unsafe practices, like putting a casserole dish on a hot stove.
Refluxgate’s lead researcher, Mel Kasulis, told TNW that the problems stem from the model’s training data:
GPT-3 also showed a curious admiration for Gordon Ramsay. The model credited every one of its recipes to the sweary Scottish chef.
Ramsay’s vast empire of restaurants, cookbooks, and TV shows has clearly extended across vast swathes of the internet.
Le dessert
I’ve been living alone during the pandemic(sniff), which means there’s been nobody around to compliment my extraordinary concoctions.
The solitude has also driven me slightly mad. So last week I decided to move back in with my momz.
To show my appreciation for her hospitality, I generously offered to cook her an AI-generated recipe.
Now, I’m obviously a disappointing son, but not so disappointing that I’d feed her a vegetable dish with no vegetables. Instead, I whipped her up some pancakes.
I used the method recommended by software firmMonolith AI, which generated it by training a machine learning model on 31 recipes for US-style fluffy pancakes.
It was undoubtedly the best AI recipe I tried.
Even my Belgian mum was impressed by the American pancakes — to an extent:
Le digestif
After a good meal, there’s nothing I enjoy more than a stiff drink.
I’m no mixologist, but a man called Tim, who writes code, hasa YouTube channelcalled Tim writes code, where he recently shared some GPT-3-generated cocktail recipes, including one called Tim writes code.
However, I didn’t make that one. Not because I don’t like Tim and his code, but my dwindling liquor cabinet didn’t have the booze required for that elaborate concoction.
Instead, I tried the equally imaginatively-named GPT-3, a mix of vodka, lime juice, and blueberry syrup, garnished with a lime wheel.
The cocktail was extraordinarily sweet, which was just fine by me. But would it impress the experts?
I asked Peter Kelly, bar manager at the aforementioned Lucky & Joy, whether he’d consider serving it up:
He didn’t envision GPT-3 earning Michelin stars, but did see some potential for AI in the kitchen.
“It might be beneficial if you can type in some ingredients and it can generate something for you. That’s economical and potentially gets rid of wastage.”
MelKasulisfrom Refluxgate had higher hopes for GPT-3’s future in recipe design:
As for me, I’ve got mixed thoughts on AI’s culinary skills. It certainly created some original recipes that no decent chef would have designed. Unfortunately, the starter and main course were absolutely horrendous.
Still, they can’t have been that bad; I ate every morsel and left the table satiated. But my stomach will neverforgiveme.
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Story byThomas Macaulay
Thomas is a senior reporter at TNW. He covers European tech, with a focus on AI, cybersecurity, and government policy.Thomas is a senior reporter at TNW. He covers European tech, with a focus on AI, cybersecurity, and government policy.
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