Campbell's Recipes Via Amazon Echo

Campbell Soup to partner with Amazon  Echo to provide recipes.  The Echo kitchen support functions are still very primitive, will be interesting to see recipes are provided.  Sign up here.  I am hoping this will be more interesting than what it sounds like.  But OK, I am a cook and ready for something creative.  Please.

Cognitive Cooking Book: Creativity?

I note that this book is now available, on order, I am a cook and was a Beta user and found the system useful, but not necessarily better than  using one of the many recipe systems out there.   It does provide an interesting template for other knowledge based systems. It also inserts the idea of creativity, not commonly included in AI.   What is creativity?  Knowledge and experience filtering an element of randomness?  I was hoping to use Chef Watson for a recent group dinner to get real feedback, but that did not work out.   Like to get other input as to its value.

Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson: Recipes for Innovation  from IBM & the Institute of Culinary Education Hardcover 

Take Your Cooking to a Whole New Level with Chef Watson and the Institute of Culinary Education!

You don't have to be a culinary genius to be a great cook. But when it comes to thinking outside the box, even the best chefs can be limited by their personal experiences, the tastes and flavor combinations they already know. That's why IBM and the Institute of Culinary Education teamed up to develop a groundbreaking cognitive cooking technology that helps cooks everywhere discover and create delicious recipes, utilizing unusual ingredient combinations that man alone might never imagine.

In Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson, IBM's unprecedented technology and ICE's culinary experts ... "

Watson Recipe App Goes live

Just got a copy of this AI Watson recipe App.  worth a look.   Here reported on by the BBC.  I was a beta user of the original Chef Watson, and liked the idea,  see the tag link below for more. The basic idea could be used as a template for other service and planning delivery ideas.  Plan to use this App for an upcoming event, and report on the experience.

More Tales of Chef Watson

Have spoken to several people recently on the now free and public cognitive demonstration system.   All the comments I have seen, by non professional cooks, have been positive.  Now here another use case.  Includes a recipe:  Chef Watson's Spicy Avocado Brussels Sprouts.    A book on the system is coming out soon.  A classic example of a domain focused, constraint-based advisory system, based on stored cases.  A form of Case Based Reasoning (CBR).

Automated Hypothesis Generation

Took a brief look at this at the request of a client, it is still in evolution.    The Watson Chef is an interesting example, but it is overwhelmed today by dozens of recipe search engines that are 'good enough'.   More generally hypothesis generation is a very valuable direction.

In the Economist:  A new type of software helps researchers decide what they should be looking for

" .... Devising new recipes sounds a trivial use for a multimillion-dollar piece of kit. But Dr Gordon’s culinary experiment neatly demonstrates the idea of automated hypothesis generation—and the possible uses of that are certainly not trivial. More than 90 groups of scientists are now developing hypothesis-generation software. They hope to use it not on recipe books but on the vast corpus of scientific literature (by one tally at least 50m scientific papers) that has piled up in public databases. ... 

It all, then, looks rather promising, both for science and for IBM—which launched a commercial version of its automated-hypothesis-generation software in August. Dr Gordon hopes Discovery Advisor, as this service is known, will be a money-spinner for the firm. If that does happen, it will probably be because it has also proved an ideas-spinner for science. ... "

Seeking More Humane Computing

IBM’s Brad Becker, chief design officer for Watson on the ‘More Humane’ Promise of Cognitive Computing, in a very thought provoking interview with Knowledge@Wharton. We always thought of cognitive systems as specialized, engineering style interactions, for specialized decision makers.

We dabbled with applications like the still available 'Stain Brain' App, now 25+ years old, that can be used directly by consumers.  (See the Stain Detective tag below for more on this)

What are the implications of  having applications like Chef Watson that take this to a new human level?  What are the specifications for humane computing?  This also combines well with new, open source and accessible sources of data.

Chef Watson as an Advisor

Just received early access to IBM's Chef Watson Beta this past week.  I have been testing, not for recipe development, but with an eye to how it's structure could be adapted to other advisory systems. Also, how it really differs from other search style systems.  How does, it adapt, learn, and support creativity? Still trying to understand those dynamics.  Also, how this form of expert system is different, and makes it more likely to be  successful than those of the 90s.  Click the Chef Watson tag for more I have written and will write about this topic.

 IBM writes about how it is different:

    " ... In contrast to a search engine that simply sifts through existing data to serve up a list of already published recipes, Chef Watson is not programmed to come up with a defined answer to a defined question - it understands, learns, and considers not just the data behind recipes and flavor compounds, but also human perception to design highly creative recipe ideas.

Using the app, users can create novel recipes by selecting ingredients, dish type and dish styles, as well as any ingredients to exclude in the final recipe. Once the user has entered in their choices, the app will generate a list of never before seen recipe suggestions.  .... " 

Computational Cooking Creativity Machine

So what is creativity?  An area we explored.  Discussed here previously: Is it the combination of a list of available resources (your pantry), your cooking skills, and the requirements of your diners?  

Perhaps optimized by some measure like cost and applause?  Plus a novelty measure?  I am going to a dinner party tonight where this will be discussed by some cognitive practitioners.

I still don't have access to the Beta discussed, could have tested that here.

In Technology Review:
" ... Can computers be creative? That’s a question likely to generate controversial answers. It also raises and some important issues too, like how to define creativity.

Seemingly unafraid of the controversy, IBM has darted into the fray by answering this poser with with a resounding ‘yes’. Computers can be creative, they say, and to prove it they have built a computational creativity machine that produces results that a knowledgeable human would consider novel, useful and even valuable—the hallmarks of genuine creativity.

IBM’s chosen field for this endeavour is cooking. The company’s creativity machine produces recipes based on chosen ingredients or cooking styles. And they’ve asked professional chefs to evaluate the results and say the feedback is promising. ... " 

Watson Assists with Recipes

A strong area of interest of mine as well.  Note again the assistant mode of expertise delivery:

" ... IBM has found a new partner for its supercomputer called Watson: Bon Appetit magazine.
Together the companies are introducing the beta version of a web-based cooking app on Monday that taps Watson, which beat two human contestants on "Jeopardy" in 2011, to create a new recipe every time someone uses it.

"We get into ruts cooking the same thing over and over again," said Adam Rapoport, editor in chief of Bon Appetit, which is published by Conde Nast. "This helps free up our minds. It's someone to collaborate with as a home cook."

The app, called Chef Watson with Bon Appetit, will be limited to invited users at the start, though Mr. Rapoport said it will "hopefully go live to the general public at some point down the road." ... ' 

And in Bob Appetit An article on the App.