Thanksgiving Woes? IBM and Big Data May Help.
In just about a week, on Thursday November 28, people all over the United States will kick off the "holiday season" with the celebration of Thanksgiving Day. While the day's significance is both historical and profound, in modern times it consists of a lot of shopping and a big meal with family and friends gathered around the dinner table. Pre-thanksgiving is a time to be on the lookout for creative new recipes. Sure, we can get recipes from magazines, websites and friends and while they may be special, they will not be unique. Wouldn’t it be nice to have an app that would create a special unique recipe just for you? A delightful recipe that has never been executed before. Well the idea is not as futuristic as it sounds. It may be here sooner than you think. IBM and big data have a lot to do with this particular innovation.
Can computers be creative? IBM thinks they can. IBM scientists Lav R. Varshney and other members of an IBM team, have used data sets and proprietary algorithms in the daunting field of the culinary arts to develop a computational creativity system. The data sets they have used are recipes, molecular level food related data and data about the compounds, ingredients and dishes that people like and dislike. They then developed an algorithm that produces thousands or millions of new ideas from the recipes. The recipes are then evaluated to select the best ones that combine ingredients in a way that has never been attempted before. Humans can interact with the system by choosing a key ingredient and the kind of cuisine.
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- Innovation
- technology
- data