One of the most common criticisms of AI tools is that they generate mediocre creative ideas, but what if we’re just asking the wrong questions?

Pete Wells — who for years was the the most feared person in the New York restaurant scene as the restaurant critic for the New York Times — recently asked some of the most respected chefs in the world how they’re using AI at their restaurants. Here’s what he found:

Grant Achatz’s Favourite Cooking Tool

The chef of Alinea, which has been named the best restaurant in the world, is using ChatGPT to develop an entire menu at his new restaurant called Next.

Achatz has trained ChatGPT to act as a fictional chef named Jill who has studied under a wide variety of the world’s greatest chefs. Jill’s job is to suggest surprising dishes that he can develop to be put onto the menu at Next. Jill is one of nine imaginary chefs that Achatz has developed to provide him with ideas.

Aaron Tekulve Tracks Seasonal Ingredients

Telkuve is the chef at Surrell in Seattle, where he has trained ChatGPT to help him keep tabs on various foraged plants and seafood, according to the brief windows when they’re available throughout the year.

Jenner Tomaska Finds New Variations on Classic Dishes

Sometimes the best application is simply to have AI shake us out of our routines. The chef at The Alston in Chicago says, “You can get really hyper-specific ideas that are out of the box.” He feeds ChatGPT traditional dishes and asks for suggestions on new ways to prepare them using non-traditional ingredients.

For example, he asked it for variations on a fried pastry known as barbajuan. According the the article: “ChatGPT’s earliest suggestions were a little basic, but as he fed it more demanding prompts — for instance, a filling that would reflect Alain Ducasse’s style, steakhouse traditions and local produce — the fillings got more interesting. How about Midwestern crayfish, white miso and fresh dill, with pickled celery root on the side?”

Of course, not every chef is on board. Wells quotes chef Dominique Crenn who said, “Cooking remains, at its core, a human experience. It’s not something I believe can or should be replicated by a machine.”

And of course chef Crenn is right, but what if it was about augmenting human creativity, rather than replicating it?

Every one of us has creative projects, new ideas we’re working on, or even mundane tasks where we face limitations of our own knowledge and ideas. I believe these chefs have unlocked a brilliant application of AI, which is not to ask it to replace them, but to help them add a layer of new ideas that they may not have otherwise considered.

How could you apply that same type of creativity to your own work?

Read the full article on the NYTimes website here