IBM Watson: The Recipe Fixation
April 12, 2015
Years ago I heard a Googler, maybe Jeff Dean, talk about recipes. Smart refrigerators, odd ball ingredients, a perfect meal from an automatic Google query. Whatever. Why not microwave a pizza and move on.
I am okay with food, but I don’t obsess. Free range, organic, industrial chicken. All okay.
“IBM’s Chef Watson Recipe Book Lets You Cook Like a Supercomputer” is a throwback to those heady days before Google was the darling of every country’s privacy watchdogs. But it is not Google. Today it is IBM and its Watson system. Watson is into food. In my opinion, it might be more satisfying to stakeholders if Watson were into generating big revenue and even bigger profits. Supersize that cash stream, please.
The article, almost lovingly, reported:
Cognitive Cooking” contains 65 original recipes generated from Watson’s computer brain. “The collection of recipes was crafted based on the system’s understanding of flavor compounds, food pairing theories and the psychology of people’s likes and dislikes,” IBM says. Chef Watson’s mind is full of thousands of recipes, ingredients, pleasing pairings and data about the chemical composition of food.
A dash of reality seasons the article, which I assume will be recycled in one of the tony publications IBM’s PR people target. I learned:
Watson still needs people to bring its culinary visions to life. Chef Watson may spit out the ideas, but human chefs from the Institute of Culinary Education tested and refined the recipes. It would be interesting to see which concepts didn’t make the cut.
There you go. I will have some tamarind with my Big Blue chicken. Hold the Turmeric.
Amazing. Will this be a best seller among food lovers? In Harrod’s Creek, cuisine runs more along the flavor profile of pan grilled squirrel. Does Watson do squirrel? Does Watson do sales?
Stephen E Arnold, April 12, 2015
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