AI isn’t going to peel your carrots for you. It’ll explain how and why to do it or not, or, most appealing to modern people, what’s the fastest way. In fact, here is what AI advises: “The fastest way to peel carrots is to use a swivel peeler to make rapid, back-and-forth strokes along the length of the carrot without lifting the blade.” Ah. Links follow to various videos of humans (at least I think they’re real people ) peeling carrots quickly.
Nor will AI cook your carrots for you. Again, advice abounds but, as Julia Child may have said after picking a dropped ingredient up off the floor, “You are alone in the kitchen.” It’s just you, your stove, and your ingredients working together all by yourselves to make dinner.
A friend asked, “What about robots cooking?” Of course, turn to your cellphone to find robots in a kitchen. One video shows a robot picking a pan up off a stove, holding it perfectly vertical, dumping the contents on itself and the floor, then doing the old soft-shoe, shuffling food all over, before collapsing in an electronic heap. It was hysterically funny to watch; no doubt some engineer is beavering away as we speak, refining robotic dexterity.
What about growing food? Same scenario, pretty much. Lots of advice, big machines with an operator in the cabin burning now ever-more-expensive diesel, roaring up and down acres of land.
I end up wondering exactly how we will spend all the time AI and robots will afford us? This is a serious question for workers being laid off in favor of AI, which doesn’t need bathroom breaks, a lunch hour, or time off to nurse a cold. The question seems to be: what are humans good for? Writing poetry? Nursing the sick? Composing ethereal music? Fixing broken plumbing? Peeling carrots? Those all need analog attention. Well, maybe not writing poetry and composing music.
We might wonder if we still need humans to grow and harvest carrots. Not so much. Even small farming operations can use mechanical devices to seed carrots. On large commercial farms enormous machines do the harvesting job by yanking up millions of carrots by their green tops, knocking away clinging soil, and flinging them into the big container it conveys. Of course, carrots can take all that banging around and not get bruised. And then, you can buy them already peeled.
So then I wondered if we still needed humans to pick, say, tender strawberries. It appears not. Autonomous harvesters with robotic arms that detect ripeness nip berries off the stem and even deposit them directly into clamshells for market. No robotic sensor can taste a strawberry to see how delicious it is, as we humans can, which means that too often that clamshell is filled with the mere simulacrum of a strawberry. The good news, however, is that it spares farmers from needing 25 to 30 laborers, often migrants being deported by the dozens. The bad news is that they won’t be replaced by AI-laid-off workers.
Abundant leisure time afforded us by machines that think and do for us sounds terrific until you ponder how we will be fed, housed, and cared for in illness. Huge farm equipment costs a lot of money and farmers can’t just give away farm produce. Nor can people who might cook our food with or without robotic help. Folks who fix plumbing and sit with the sick and dying have to be sustained while our culture is allergic to a guaranteed basic income.
Probably no data center will sprout up on our islands, nor will robots replace sternmen. And I bless my lucky stars that I can grow enough carrots in my garden to supply me for most of the year, and that I have a good sharp peeler to use. If you come over some sunny day to help with analog planting and weeding, I’ll share carrots and my peeler with you while an AI version of me writes this column.
Sandy Oliver is a food historian who gardens, cooks, and writes on Islesboro. She may be contacted at SandyOliver47@gmail.com
