Crumpets, but not as ChatGPT imagined them. Photo / Getty Images
Crumpets, but not as ChatGPT imagined them. Photo / Getty Images
THREE KEY FACTS:
The use of artificial intelligence, or AI, is redefining how we interact with technology by automating routine tasks.
As much as a third of the world’s produce is wasted, costing the global economy a staggering US$1 trillion ($1.6t) a year. However, innovators are using AI to fight back.
Some of the key concerns around AI use relate to its lack of understanding of the human experience.
Kim Knight is a journalist with the New Zealand Herald’s premium lifestyle team and has a master’s in gastronomy.
OPINION
Statistically, the average New Zealand woman will consume 30,395 dinners before she dies.
To put this another way: I will spend more of my lifetimedeciding how to cook a potato than I did choosing a husband.
As a control freak who likes to cook, what’s for dinner is largely determined by me. All that admin adds up. Months of my existence will be devoted to planning, procuring and prepping for an evening meal.
I don’t mind, because understanding exactly what width of pasta should be served with finely grated bottarga is my love language. Until it is not.
This is an argument that has more holes than havarti. It wilfully ignores my significant other’s excellent fish curries, home-made pizza bases and mushroom omelettes. It does not account for restaurant meals, or dinners made by whānau, or those times when a pinot gris paired with tomato sauce and a bowl of fries definitely counts as a vegetarian option.
My point is that I do most of the thinking about cooking.
Cooking is not hard. But repeatedly deciding what to cook is a Herculean task (obviously no Greek hero ever made his own dinner, but if you’ve ever slayed a nine-headed hydra and/or cooked for a flatmate with dietary requirements, you’ll probably know what I mean).
Nadia Lim understood this when she pulled up a seat at the My Food Bag table. Diners who hand a menu back to the waitperson with an airy “whatever the kitchen says is good” understand this. In a world requiring one million decisions before breakfast, the prospect of somebody else deciding what to cook for dinner is more delicious than Bluff oysters.
Science has tried to make mealtimes easier.
In 1916, newspapers reported on a wonder product called “frucera”. The complete food replacement contained 21 ingredients, including wheat, corn, oats, rice, legumes, oranges, grapefruit, figs, prunes, asparagus, spinach, lettuce, onions, carrots and celery. “Think of the time this will save women, the hours that can be spent out of the kitchen,” said the inventor. “Why get married?” wrote the journalist.
For a time, it was fashionable to eschew meat. Sadly, reported the New Zealand Times in 1907, “no matter how convinced an average man might be that a vegetarian diet was best, unless he could persuade some woman to prepare him these new dishes, he was powerless to carry his own views into effect”.
The vegetarian option. Photo / Alex Burton
The future of dinner has, at various points in history, been touted as seaweed, soya beans, wood cellulose and sticking your finger in a light socket (according to this 1920s theory, electric shocks would add so much heat energy to the stomach, it would not require food).
Some futurists said our meals would be condensed into a single pill; others argued even Buck Rogers would stop for a sandwich en route to Mars. Absolutely nobody predicted jalapeno poppers, triple cheese souffle-flavoured potato chips or ChatGPT.
I am not ready to hand my kitchen tongs to a robot. But could an artificial intelligence engine take the thinking work out of dinner?
ChatGPT (predictably): “Of course!”
I plugged in 32 random grocery items purchased in the past week and, a split second later, received a five-day meal plan.
Day one’s chicken drumstick bake required four items not on my list (olive oil, garlic, rosemary and lemon juice) but the suggested cabbage, spring onion and mandarin side salad was, I conceded, impressive.
Day two was beef mince with onions, garlic, canned tomatoes, curry powder and (don’t judge) a splash of cooking sake. Day three was lamb, stir-fried with cumin seeds and curry powder. Day four was a chickpea curry with (surprise!) curry powder. Day five: Peanut butter chocolate chip crumpets.
Pardon?
“Spread peanut butter on crumpets and sprinkle with chocolate chips. Serve with a side of Kāpiti sweet rhubarb and vanilla yoghurt for dipping,” my computer instructed.
This does not, I typed, seem a very nutritious dinner?
“You’re absolutely right,” my computer responded. “Peanut butter chocolate chip crumpets wouldn’t typically be considered a balanced or particularly healthy dinner option. Let’s make a healthier adjustment ... "
