In 2029, will any AI be able to work as a competent cook in an arbitrary kitchen? (Gary Marcus benchmark #3)
68
191
1.5K
2030
38%
chance

The third question from this post: https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/dear-elon-musk-here-are-five-things

The full text is: "In 2029, AI will not be able to work as a competent cook in an arbitrary kitchen (extending Steve Wozniak’s cup of coffee benchmark)."

Judgment will be by me, not Gary Marcus.

Ambiguous whether this means start or end of 2029, so I have set it for the end.

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bought Ṁ95 of YES

A humanoid robot using a simple coffee machine to make coffee, not huge evidence but still notable https://twitter.com/adcock_brett/status/1743987597301399852

Wait. Does he mean by directly moving pans, or by giving orders to humans? Probably the YES side is interpreting as above.

predicts NO

@FrancescoDondi By releasing the hypno-drones.

bought Ṁ100 of NO

In 2029, will Gary Marcus be able to work as a competent cook in an arbitrary kitchen?

bought Ṁ100 of NO

@MartinRandall If this is intended as a criticism of the criterion, it is a bad one.

He could do that with a few weeks of training. I think if an AI can do it with a few weeks of training, that is pretty much as good as being able to do it without the training.

predicts NO

@DavidBolin On the object level, I doubt that Gary Marcus could be a competent cook in an arbitrary kitchen with a few weeks training in that kitchen, but of course that depends on "arbitrary" and "competent" which are ill-defined. Most of my evidence on rapid career switches comes from reality TV shows, which imply greater than a few weeks retraining.

I also think that being able to work as a competent chef in an arbitrary kitchen with no additional training is much more impressive. In particular it implies adversarial robustness that is hard to achieve in AI with current techniques. In humans it implies a depth of experience in cooking, linguistics, and world culture that is rarely achieved.

We're both betting NO so I think we both think this milestone is unlikely by the date. I'm not really criticizing the criteria, just pointing out that it's superhuman to justify my bets.

bought Ṁ100 of NO

There's no economic reason to develop this rather than adapting kitchens for the needs of AI cooks.

predicts NO

Does this resolve yes if the ai can work in an arbitrary kitchen by releasing nanobots that turn the kitchen into paperclips?

bought Ṁ50 of NO

I can't believe this has so much money on YES. They're unlikely to have competent self-driving cars on that timeline, and this is a much harder problem.

My personal impression: of the 5 Gary Marcus questions this is the hardest. The other four are "shovel-ready" in the sense that I think the other four may not require additional breakthroughs, but AFAIK solving the robotics problem here would require at least one major advance (I do not follow the robotics literature very closely, however)

bought Ṁ10 of NO

@vluzko This would need AI to be applied to robotic control, much better object recognition, the ability to understand a wide variety of non-objects (e.g. soup, mashed potatoes), the ability to navigate an arbitrary tight space, the ability to safely navigate around humans, and major advances in robotic limb design.

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