I’ve been trying to perfect an Upside Down Bundt Cake recipe for the better part of a year.
I’ve made it six times now (Maybe 7? Truly, I’ve lost count), and it has not once popped out of the pan without a crater of cake left behind.
I’m no stranger to bundt cakes. I make them a lot. Usually successfully.
But this one was besting me. I’d switched out ingredients and methods, changed the way I greased the pan and the temperature of the oven, and still, craters. Every. Single. Time.
Finally, I sought out the Internet to see if someone had figured out the secret I was missing. One of the first recipes listed in the Google search looked fantastic, with the glossy, unmarred finish I had been dreaming of.
But as I read and studied the photos, something felt off. The text was stilted and strangely formal for the story it was trying to tell, as if both everyone in the world and no one at all could be writing it.
And the photos, while lovely, were so perfect it was uncanny, the edges blurred into an unnatural shine, like the top of a piece of Jello.
It was, on closer inspection, AI generated. All of it—the photos, the text, and I assume, the recipe.
And man, I almost cried right there at my desk, cake batter still stuck under my fingernails and flour in my hair.
A computer had done what I could not. It had cracked the code, turning out a cake as neat as a pin: no divots where it had stubbornly stuck to the pan, no burnt edges or gooey centers, and obviously never the dreaded soggy bottom.
How could I compete with this?
And, worse, what did this mean for a home cook who’s built her life and livelihood around food?
I let the existential crisis jostle around in my mind for a solid day, ping ponging between depression and rage, wondering if I should go back to school and leave the fickle science of food to the machines.
After a cry (or three) and googling masters programs in various subjects I may or may not actually enjoy, I remembered that I’m a human, and AI is not.
And when it comes to art, to creation—the relentless, frenetic, down in the muck work of feeding each other and dragging paint across a canvas and reworking a musical score for the 17th time—humans will always have the advantage.
A machine has not felt the warmth of the sun on its face or gasped at the icy chill of the ocean bubbling up around its feet. It hasn’t felt its stomach rumble in hunger or smelled a bolognese bubbling on the stove.
AI hasn’t had its heart broken or grieved someone it loves or held a child’s fat, sticky hand in its palm. It knows nothing of the musty, earth-worn smell of the forest in Autumn or the sharp, surprising slice of a paper cut.
It doesn’t know the work of being human—how beautiful and terrible and miraculously mundane it all is.
AI doesn’t stand at the stove, sweat gathering on its upper lip, whisking a roux until it’s just the right thickness.
It doesn’t lick the beaters or bite into a slice of pizza while it’s still flaming hot, sucking in air to stop the burn.
AI hasn’t had to fail, at least not in the way that you and I fail. It hasn’t burnt the casserole or had to run to turn off the fire alarm when the pie bubbled over in the oven and filled the house with smoke.
AI doesn’t think about you while it’s generating numbers and ingredients, sifting the amalgamation of the World Wide Web into a set of orderly instructions that may or may not be correct.
But humans? Writers, chefs, home cooks, food bloggers? We do think of you!
Live footage of me thinking about you.
We think about your kitchens and your wonky ovens and how you might not have this kind of pan or that ingredient.
We think about your families and your busy schedules and your picky kids. We think about your holiday celebrations and how good it feels to share something you made with the people you love.
We think about how you might enjoy this food—perhaps with a partner or a friend, perhaps curled on the couch by yourself, a small comfort after a long, lonely day.
And when we cook for our in-real-life friends, you can bet we think of them too. We pray as we pack up a meal for the family who just got the scary diagnosis. We smile as we think of your kids, grabbing at a tray of cookies, or of you, eating that slice of cake in the car so you don’t have to share.
We think of our own families, the rich food traditions we’ve carried from our ancestors and the ones we hope to add for our own children.
And we fail. Oh boy, do we fail! Sometimes once. Sometimes six times. We fail over and over again, in the hopes that it helps you succeed.
I have always hesitated to call myself a writer, and I would never deign to call myself a chef. I don’t have the bona fides for either title. But what I do have is my humanity, and that, in a world increasingly driven by algorithms, feels like the greatest gift I can offer.
It’s humans’ ability to feel—to know deep in our bones how fragile and wondrous life is—that makes art, well, art.
I have long believed you can taste when food is made with love, and I believe that’s true for other art forms as well. The goosebumps on my arms understand when someone has poured their humanity onto a canvas or a novel or a musical arrangement. It is this sensory connection, visceral and raw (dare I say spiritual?), that AI cannot ever hope to mimic.
I’ve decided not to let the machines have this one just yet.
They might be able to learn, and maybe even fail, but they have no skin in the game, no literal blood, sweat, or tears. What AI produces can only ever be a shadow of the living, breathing thing it seeks to emulate.
Perhaps an AI generated upside down cake tastes good, but the work of creating something new out of the dust and leaves and fruits of this earth is still ours alone, dear humans. I hope you’ll keep making it with me.
So grateful for your words, capturing thoughts no robot could ever say. Truly, you are a good writer.
Everything about this, I truly miss the community of food blogging from the early days and agree with everything you said about humans vs AI recipes - except when you say you're not a writer because you do so beautifully.