Lately on yt I have been seeing a shitload of ads for a new oven with AI, it is marketed as knowing what you are cooking in it would make it better.
I don’t see how.
Also, on the product page on the manufacturers web page, the second sentence of the body reads:
Navigating through the extensive settings menu is beautifully simple with the new touch screen user interface.
I am sorry, a fucking settings menu on an oven is a primary sales argument?
What the hell?
There is more shit:
With cookControl Pro, all you have to do is select your dish, choose how you want it done, and let your oven do the rest.
You mean like a normal oven? You set the temp according to the dish?.
They even brags about internal steak and bread thermometers, we have had those for decades.
Well obviously, it has a connection to an app or even a smart speaker, and ofcourse the UI on the oven is a touch UI.
Thanks, but no thanks, I’ll keep using my oven with normal knobs…
It’s probably not using any AI in any modern sense of the word, it’s just there for marketing purposes. What I’m guessing it really is, is more fancy sensors (temperature sensors in more locations, infrared sensors, moisture sensors), and multiple heating elements and/or fans that can be individually turned on and off, connected to a more complicated PID controller that is adjusted based on the selected dish. So it can do things like detect that the rear is hotter than the front and turn off the rear heating element, or detect if too much moisture is being released and turn down the temperature, but it’s ultimately the same kind of technology as any oven with a temperature knob uses.
I rarely use my oven for anything other than pizza, bread and cookies, so it’s probably not very useful to me, but maybe it’s convenient if you do things like cooking a whole turkey or something?
I don’t have a link but there was a great video about an “AI rice cooker” and then a breakdown of the quite simple fuzzy logic actually inside
Neuro Fuzzy by Zojirushi? That rice cooker is awesome, but predates AI. Here’s an archive link to the product from 20 years ago: https://web.archive.org/web/20050717012420/http://www.zojirushi.com/ricecookers.html
Rice is the food that needs that shit the absolute least. Rice cookers perfectly solved that problem decades ago with magnets and heat - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSTNhvDGbYI
I can see a few uses for a smart oven like that, for lazy cooking by inexperienced chefs.
For example different meats require different cooking temperatures. If the computer knows that it’s cooking beef and that you want it medium rare, then it should be able to calculate from the shape + weight + evolution of outside temperatures when the inside of the beef is at the right temperature. With a normal oven you’d have to guesstimate the time yourself (hard without experience) for when you should start probing the meat with a meat thermometer.
The added value for an experienced chef is probably nil. They know when the meat is ready by look and feel and they might probe it once to confirm that they were right.
I think a lazy person would just toss it in a crock pot before going to bed/work and an inexperienced person would probably want to learn.
Fast food restaurants would probably want them though. But it’s not as easy to make a quick buck in that market as it is in the consumer appliance fad market.