Personal essays
How I stopped worrying and learned to love AI
A better bagel
A couple of weeks ago I tried a new recipe for bagels.
Well, new to me.
Often recipes from Chef Steps involve special ingredients - little chemical additives. This was surprisingly simple. The ingredients and ratios were roughly the same as the bagel recipe I usually use. The difference was in the technique.
There’s a recipe from them that I’ve been dying to try for veggie burgers. One version uses beans as the base and the other uses mushrooms. There are ingredients I haven’t heard of like Activa RM and sodium caseinate.
This, in turn, reminded me of General Jack D. Ripper’s speech in Dr. Strangelove, “A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That’s the way your hard-core Commie works.”
It’s kind of interesting to me to see these vegetable recipes with meat glue as one of the ingredients but it’s not for everyone.
I thought of this recipe when I listened to an interview that Dave Chang did with chef and chemist Chris Young where Dave remembered the beginning of chefs like Wiley Dufrene and Hestor Blumenthal using chemicals in their cooking to get the effect they wanted.
Dave remembers that “there was a visceral reaction ‘I’m not going to cook that way, that’s dumb’.”
I would say, if you don’t want to cook that way, then don’t cook that way.
No one can
Chris agrees that there’s a response when he releases a recipe with an ingredient as common as Xanthan Gum.
(I mean - how strange could Xantham Gum be - you can get it from Bob’s Red Mill?)
Chris doesn’t mind that some people don’t want to do this sort of cooking it’s when they feel that “the whole world needs to know that this is wrong.”
He says, “you have these people in your comments who set up the idea that there’s this purity test of cooking. Because they don’t like it I should consider using it and suggesting the use of it.”
He’s ok with people saying that these techniques aren’t for them. His techniques are extremely elaborate and they aren’t for everybody. He draws the line at people saying that noone should use them.
Moving your muscles
I write a fair amount about why AI isn’t for me. I mainly mean that LLMs are not the way I prefer to write prose or code.
I think it’s ok if you use it - so long as you’re careful and you realize that everything that you pass along as work you’re responsible for should be checked.
I do worry about your muscles atrophying.
If you’re using AI to do some of the work that’s rote and boring and better done by AI - I’m cool with it.
But if you go to the gym and ask AI to do a set of bicep curls, the weights are being lifted but they aren’t being lifted by you. Your biceps aren’t benefiting.
If your goal is to move the weights then AI is fine. If your goal is to build your biceps and the weights are the mechanism for doing so, then passing that work off to AI isn’t accomplishing your goal.
Maybe it’s us
I often worry about all the things that people say AI will replace in our lives and then I was challenged to consider whether I value the wrong things.
I heard Eugene Khoza on Trever Noah’s latest podcast episode with Arthur C. Brooks.
On it Eugene explains why he hates conversations about AI.
Consider the people who hate the thought of AI coming more and more into their lives.
You know, people like me.
Eugene says that he looks at us with sadness because of how addicted we are to the technology that we worry AI is going to take.
Eugene reminds us that, “AI is not going to replace you making breakfast or you taking a walk with your loved one or with your child or writing a book.”
“It has no interest in that,” he says.
I love that.
Eugene cautions, “If you have made technology the cornerstone of your happiness and your purpose and what keeps you busy and what keeps you entertained, of course you’re going to worry when some thing comes and threatens that.”
It’s a struggle. I still wear my Apple Watch to bed to track my sleep and I leave my iPhone on the pillow beside me.
I’m still finding joy with and without these extras.
And as AI becomes more available it will sneak in to my life more and more like Xanthum Gum once Bob’s Red Mill started selling it.
And so sometimes I will make bread with nothing more than flour, salt, water, and yeast and some times I’ll add vital wheat gluten.
I will try to find my joy outside of technology while not fearing or fleeing from the advances.
And, for the record, I’m not worried about what its doing to my precious bodily fluids.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 312. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe