cooking is something
that we human beings are
uniquely good at

I was refreshed to read the article, ‘AI cannot taste the way a chef can’: are chatbots a threat to fine dining? in the Guardian on Aug 16, 2023.

The article quotes tech entrepreneur Nikhil Abraham as saying, “AI will always be playing catch-up with human creativity, and the humans who are at the edge of creativity will always outsmart AI and have experiences that are more valuable.”

I don’t worry so much about AI so long as I can unplug my computer.

I hold that at least once a week you should unplug you computer and wave the end of the cord in front of your monitor.

To enlarge the scale on this theme, I bring up the story of the small town in North Carolina that lost power for several days when some nut put a bullet through some piece of equipment at a substation.

I hope AI remembers this story.

Maybe it does.

Maybe it does and someday it will design its own computer housing to be indestructible.

There is this story from back in the ’60s when some University Professors toured the at-that-time leader in computers for public use, Texas Instruments.

The Professors were looking for computers for their schools and they were shown the latest developments in machines that most likely had about 5000 bytes (5k) of memory and were cutting edge for their time.

According to the story, one of the Professors noticed this giant stainless steal box in a corner and asked what that was for?

The company tour guide said that was the computer housing they were developing for the Navy.

It had to be able to survive a missile attack the tour guide pointed out.

The Professors looked at the steel box then said, “That’s what we want!”

The tour guide looked at them and asked if they were expecting a missile attack?

“No”, said the Professors, “… grad students!”

And so was born the idea that any computer housing had to have at least 17 screws in it until Apple came along with their twist-and-pull to open box around 2005.

The point here is the human competent.

Those darn grad students wanted to get in there to see how the darn thing worked.

Those darn humans who, at the edge of creativity, will always outsmart AI and have experiences that are more valuable.

And cooking is where AI will lose.

As the article says:

“… robots and software can’t replicate what a chef does, even if you can codify a recipe. Like, an eggplant is smaller or larger than before, the fire is a smidge hotter than the last time I cooked.” When chefs create and execute a dish, they’re using all their senses, plus intuition. And as of now, AI doesn’t have senses of its own.“

I guess I could be worried about that … as of now … but, as of now, I am not.

The article ends with this line.

AI cannot taste in the way a chef can.

Even if you’re repeatedly using the same ingredient, let’s say a piece of fruit, AI cannot account for ripeness, sweetness, texture.“

Thinking of the human competent and the role of the chef in the statement AI cannot taste in the way a chef can, I though to that wonderful George Orwell book, Down and Out in Paris and London.

Mr. Orwell, needing employment, worked in the kitchens of Hotel X though tradition has it that he worked at Maxim’s, a landmark restaurant to THIS DAY in Paris..

Back in 1933, Mr. Orwell wrote this about Chefs and dining in a restaurant.

It is not a figure of speech, it is a mere statement of fact to say that a French cook will spit in the soup — that is, if he is not going to drink it himself.

He is an artist, but his art is not cleanliness.

To a certain extent he is even dirty because he is an artist, for food, to look smart, needs dirty treatment.

When a steak, for instance, is brought up for the head cook’s inspection, he does not handle it with a fork.

He picks it up in his fingers and slaps it down, runs his thumb round the dish and licks it to taste the gravy, runs it round and licks it again, then steps back and contemplates the piece of meat like an artist judging a picture, then presses it lovingly into place with his fat, pink fingers, every one of which he has licked a hundred times that morning.

When he is satisfied, he takes a cloth and wipes his fingerprints from the dish, and hands it to the waiter.

And the waiter, of course, dips his fingers into the gravy — his nasty, greasy fingers which he is for ever running through his brilliantined hair.

Whenever one pays more than, say, ten francs for a dish of meat in Paris, one may be certain that it has been fingered in this manner.

In very cheap restaurants it is different; there, the same trouble is not taken over the food, and it is just forked out of the pan and flung onto a plate, without handling.

Roughly speaking, the more one pays for food, the more sweat and spittle one is obliged to eat with it.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Maybe this AI in the kitchen deserves a second look.

Post Script: Pictured above is Chef Paul Bocuse, named tje best chef of the Century in the 1900s, renowned for recipes like Poularde de Bresse au riz sauce supréme or Rable de liévre a la créme and Oeufs durs aux oignons dits a la tripe. I ran across an interview with him on YouTube where he was asked when was the best time to be a chef?

“1946 – 1947!” he answered, “Right after the war …. People ate everything!“

in poorer nations
systemic tendency
prices to be lower

In the opinion piece, Wonking Out: How Super Is Your Superpower? by By Paul Krugman writes about the economic differences in different economy’s.

Paul Krugman has been an Opinion columnist since 2000 and is also a distinguished professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade and economic geography.

Mr. Krugman writes of the challenges of comparing Yuan and Dollars and the steps necessary to get meaningful numbers to draw useful conclusions.

Mr. Krugman writes:

But there’s another reason to adjust for prices.

If you want to compare either the real sizes of two economies — the total amount of stuff each produces — or their standards of living, you want to know if goods and services are cheaper in one economy than in the other and to take that into account.

This is especially true if you’re comparing a high-income economy like the United States with a middle-income nation like China or, even more so, with a low-income country like India.

That’s because there is a systemic tendency for prices to be lower in poorer nations, because of the Balassa-Samuelson effect (discovered and analyzed simultaneously and independently by Bela Balassa and Paul Samuelson in 1964).

What caught my eye was that last bit.

That’s because there is a systemic tendency for prices to be lower in poorer nations, because of the Balassa-Samuelson effect.

Mr. Krugman notes that Balassa-Samuelson effect was discovered and analyzed simultaneously and independently by Bela Balassa and Paul Samuelson in 1964.

Really?

No one understood this until 1964?

Really?

It is a known effect of economics that there is a systemic tendency for prices to be lower in poorer nations?

If people are poor they have less many and if they have less money, prices are lower.

No one noticed until 1964?

I remember reading the book Up Front by WW2 Cartoonist Bill Maudlin, (Willie and Joe) in which this story was told.

If we find a barbershop where the price equals six cents in American money, we plop down what amounts to fifty cents in tattered European currency. When our change is counted out to us in even more tattered bills—some worth as little as one cent – we tell the barber to keep the change. We’d have paid that price in America, and besides, we hate to have wads of the stuff stick- ing between our fingers every time we reach into our pockets for a cigarette.

After two or three dogfaces have repeated this performance, the barber decides the stories he has heard about all Americans owning oil wells are true, and the price goes up to fifty cents. Along comes a Canadian, whose government allows him about ten dollars per month and banks the rest for his return, and when the barber tries to soak him fifty cents the Canadian tears the shop apart.

I guess that poor barber had a first hand experience of the Balassa-Samuelson effect.

you call a meeting
no one shows up, probably
you’re not a leader

As quoted in the article, Back-to-Office Battles Underscore a Change in Workplace Authority by Stefan Stern (New York Times – May 11, 2023).

The article has the blurb: As workers push back on mandates, business leaders are wrestling with a new, post-pandemic identity.

As you might guess, the article deals with the all important topic of how to deal with an out of the office work force when you have an in-the-office leader mentality.

Most folks feel that work-from-home started with the recent pandemic in 2020.

I started managing a corporate website in 1995.

I started working from home in 1995.

Sure, I was in the office Monday through Friday, 9 to 5, but I was aware of the website 24×7, 365.

Still am.

The recent article however focuses on adjustments for management for today with the number of workers who still work but work from home full time or at least 2 or 3 days of the work week.

Much like the tree falling noiselessly in an empty forest, do workers working away from an empty office really work?

And if workers are working or aren’t working, how do leaders lead?

The article goes on to quote a Terri Kelly who had discussion with a Mr. Gary Hamel who is billed as a “management guru”.

Ms. Kelly was quoting an associate.

Being transparent here, I didn’t realize this got so complicated.

I mean here is my passage in question:

Ultimately, leadership authority is granted by willing followers. Terri Kelly, who led the textiles and high-tech firm WL Gore for 13 years, until 2018, put it best in a discussion with the management guru Gary Hamel in 2010: “One of my associates said, ‘If you call a meeting, and no one shows up, you’re probably not a leader, because no one is willing to follow you.’

Anyway, this associate of Ms. Kelly was quoted by Ms. Kelly in a discussion with Mr. Hamel as saying, “If you call a meeting, and no one shows up, you’re probably not a leader, because no one is willing to follow you.”

While this is all in reference to today’s post pandemic workplace, the quote is referenced back … to 2010.

Ultimately, leadership authority is granted by willing followers.

That seems to go back a lot further than 2010.

that it could be worse …
does this knowledge hurt or help
get you through your day

I have long held that listening to an online digital radio station from London helps me get through my workday.

See, as London is 4 or 5 hours ahead of us (depending on the season) by listening to this station, I know that, somewhere in this world, someone has already made it through the next 4 or 5 hours.

Lately I really can’t complain as I have a pretty cool job that has me working in a place where I can stroll on the beach along the Atlantic Ocean on my lunch break.

But there was time when besides having to be available 24×7, I also felt that anytime I picked up the phone I could be fired for no other reason than that I COULD be fired (and one day, that call came … come to think of it, the same place called me twice … its a long story).

It made for a great work environment.

I did know, even then, there were worse jobs but that never really made me feel better.

Maybe that was because I never knew how much worse a job could get.

Yesterday I happened to researching the horse drawn carriage tours that are available in Beaufort (or Beaufort by the Sea as they like to call it) South Carolina and I came across this bit of descriptive text.

First it says, “Re-live the past through the narration of our professional guides and the clippity-clop of our horses …“

Then to reassure any and all of those concerned about those horses that clippity-clop, the descriptive text goes on to describe the care of those horses.

It says, “When the horses are working, each horse is individually monitored no matter the weather conditions.

During a hot summer day their temperature is taken rectally at the beginning of the day, the start of the tour, and after each tour.

Their respiration is taken at the same time as their temperature.

If an individual horse goes up by 3 degrees then we do not allow them to go out on tour until their temperature drops to their normal rate.

If their respiration goes up, they are not allowed to go out until they have dropped to within a safe range.”

While I was happy to learn the care and comfort of these poor animals was high on the list of the people who conduct these tours, this text revealed an aspect of horse care and clippity-clop buggy rides that I had not thought of.

That maybe I wish I had NOT thought of.

Good to know.

But something, maybe I didn’t need to know.

And as for the process …

Well, let’s just say, it’s not my circus.

And I am glad for the job I have.

And they next time I got the go-to-work blues, I will say to myself, “Well, I don’t have to …”

there’s a collective
that whole machine all making
each other’s money

In the article, Deranged diners, inflation and staff shortages: American restaurants are struggling, by Rachel Sugar, Ms. Sugar writes:

“It really does change the way the restaurant works,” says Sophie, 30, a longtime server at a casual fine-dining restaurant in Lower Manhattan, who estimates that about a third of people working front of house are new since the pandemic.

(To speak freely, she asked to be identified by her first name only.) “It changes the culture.” It is perhaps less united that it used to be, divided by default into an old guard and a new guard, “which is kind of the opposite of what I would want in a restaurant culture, which would be solidarity and inclusivity”, she says.

Jones, a classical cellist by training, likens restaurants to orchestras. “There’s all these components, but there’s a collective as well,” he says. “That whole machine is what is able to accomplish things. No one part is more important.”

Or as Sophie, whose restaurant pools tips, puts it, less romantically: “We’re all making each other’s money.