Popular Science Australia - 01.04.2018

by Janelle Shane / illustration by eboy

WHEN COMPUTERS TRY TO IMITATE HUMANS, THEY OFTEN GET

confused. But simulated brain cells in so-called neural networks can

mimic our problem-solving skills. An AI will look at a dataset, igure

out its governing rules, and use those instructions to make some-

thing new. We already employ these bots to recognise faces, drive

cars, and caption images for the blind. But can a computer cook? I

fed a neural network thousands of recipes and asked it to whip up

something of its own. It spat out an...interesting dish.

1 Amnesiac AI
To keep processing
fast, the network
recalls only 65
characters at a time.
It adds cocoa just
before it would oth-
erwise forget we’re
making “chocolate.”
Hopefully it forgets
that black puddings
usually feature blood.

2 Word salad

Title, category, in-

gredients, directions.

It gets this format

every time because of

consistency across all

the recipes we pulled

from. But my AI

hasn’t seen as many

examples of how to

use rare ingredients

like sesame.

3 Date holy

Sounds like frosting!

We’re staying in

dessert territory.

But what’s with the

name? Capital letters

are tough; they’re

treated as unrelated

to lowercase. A neu-

ral net has to learn

these from scratch

with few examples.

4 Sweet defeat

The ingredient list is

already forgotten.

Chocolate is just a

lucky guess pulled from

an average cookbook.

“Until golden brown”

could mean sweet or

savoury, and

ambiguity confuses

the network. Garlic?

Game over.

5 Feedback

The confused net-

work is spitting out

random words—cre-

ating more confusion,

leading to more

random words. But

it remembered to

close its parenthesis.

There’s probably a

neuron solely devoted

to parentheses.

6 Yum?

Words like “frost”

or “serve” can cue

a network to inish;

many recipes in our

dataset end this way.

Ours just happened

to give up—it could

have kept going

forever. We were

making cake, right?

Let’s say it’s cake.

EIGHT

Number of recipes

containing blood:

INTERNET RECIPES

CHOCOLATEBUTTERBROTHBLACKPUDDING

cheese/eg

4 oz finely ground

1 teaspoon butter

1/2 cup milk

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1/4 cup rice cream, chopped

1 lb cream

--- ---

1 large egg

1 powdered sugar serving barme

1/4 cup butter or margarine, melted

Brown sugar, chocolate; baking powd beer, lemon juice and

salt in chunk in greased 9 x 2 inch cak. Chill il ld b

d b bbl Pl li h lf b i t t k

Place in frying pan in preheated oven. Sprinkle

with fresh parsley for cooking. Eating dish to hect in pot of the

oil, pull over half-and half. Place in a bowl. Pat thetings on a

strip of calaparo and wanned cooking in butter by cooking the

seasoning. Sprinkle with onions. & Pull when bubbles and carrot

is cooked, about 5 minutes. On a 15 inch hour a blender or

paper mix to by dried roughes to boil ( h d

Yield:

The Popular Science recipe card library ©Copyright 2018 by Bonnier. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the

U.S.A.

cocoa;

(which is discovered.)

1 cak

1 sesame peel

-DATE HOLY-

Chill until golden brown

and bubbly. Place serve garlic half by pieoun on top to make

more use bay.

ro

TRAINING TIME:

647

Number of recipes that

begin with “chocolate”:

6

5

4

3

2

1

24,044

LIGHT BYTES

Just Add A

Dash Of Data

Charted

POPSCI.COM.AU 59