The CEO of the technology sector used AI to host a dinner party. Here is the menu

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From the choice of dishes to satisfying the specific tastes of the guests and, of course, the possibility of a catastrophe in the kitchen, organizing a dinner party is a stressful affair.

What if, instead of digging through cookbooks for hours, you could type in a few simple hints and use the magic of generative AI to create a complete set of menu items according to a certain innovative theme?

Sean Linehan, CEO of San Francisco-based business coaching startup Exec, tried exactly that when he threw generated AI weekend dinner party with “surprisingly delicious” results.

He asked ChatGPT, a trendy new tool created by OpenAI, to compile a list of unique fusion themes and settled on Indian-Mediterranean, with input from guests who were both adventurous in their culinary arts and skilled enough to turn potentially crude recipes into delicious dishes. .

“Most of my friends assumed that what would come out would be incoherent and disgusting. They assumed it wouldn’t work,” Linehan said in an interview. “Basically, I asked them to believe me that even if it was rude, it would still be funny.

“Even my fiancee said, ‘I’ll do it because you want it,'” Linehan laughs.

Some skepticism was justified. For example, the Japanese-Italian idea was abandoned due to the limited appeal of the sushi/pizza hybrid.

The menu has been further honed with tips geared towards the refined taste of San Francisco and dietary restrictions for its eight guests. For each dish, he asked ChatGPT to create a list of ingredients, cooking times, serving sizes, and instructions. Then he sent out assignments to his friends.

resulting dishes included saffron rice with toasted almonds and currants, hummus flavored with chaat masala, fried portobello mushrooms with raita and mint chutney, and baklava with cardamom and saffron pistachios, which was a special hit.

Nearly all of the dishes have been modified by different chefs, according to Linehan. And there were a few hiccups: for example, the masala recipe, which included the spice mix itself as an ingredient, and the whitefish stew, which required three times as many spices as the recipe called for.

“When everyone arrived, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. I think everyone was a little nervous that they were going to sit down and have a terrible meal,” Linehan said. “However, at the end of the party, everyone was very pleasantly surprised and said they would do it again.”

Linehan said he has been using OpenAI technology for many years and has implemented generative AI into his company’s software platform. But the intersection of his culinary interests first came when, out of curiosity, Linehan asked the platform to come up with a recipe for a dish called Absolute Serotonin Boost and explain why he chose the ingredients he chose.

To his surprise, it turned out to be a superfood quinoa salad that met all the criteria for what he was looking for.

Sometimes, to his fiancée’s chagrin, Linehan began to incorporate ChatGPT usage into her everyday meals, asking the platform to come up with recipes based on what was left in the fridge.

The social media reaction to his AI-powered party was divided between excitement and interest and over-the-top concern that humanity is delegating control of tastes and experiences to machines.

There were a lot of jokes at dinner about AI overlords, but other than Roko’s basilisk, Linehan thinks these tools can be very powerful, as well as just plain fun.

“Anyone who sees this as some sort of fatalistic denial of human responsibility is simply missing the point,” Linehan said. “The thing is, we all enjoyed an outrageous amount of very tasty food.”

But he couldn’t help but add a little joke about the upcoming robot takeover.

“Hey, if we’re going to be enslaved, let’s at least make it nice,” Linehan said.

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