Last month, I headed down to San Luis Obispo to participate in a National Science Foundation-funded project analyzing the impact of automation and AI on the food system. I’d been invited to participate in a workshop headed up by Patrick Lin and Ryan Jenkins, professors at Cal Poly and the project leads.
The workshop was the first for the four-year project exploring the social and ethical impacts of automation and artificial intelligence in kitchens. The project endeavors to draw out the wide-ranging implications of this technology, exploring both the impact on commercial environments like restaurants and how automation could impact the longstanding tradition of home cooking and family meals.
“This project will help to draw out the hidden and very broad impacts of technology,” said Lin at the time of the project’s announcement. “By focusing on the trend of robot…
