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Comment by scottmas | Hacker News Reader

Before an LLM discovers a cure for cancer, I propose we first let it solve the more tractable problem of discovering the “God Cheesecake” - the cheesecake do delicious that a panel of 100 impartial chefs judges to be the most delicious they have ever tasted. All the LLM has to do is intelligently search through the much more combinatorially bounded “cheesecake space” until it finds this maximally delicious cheesecake recipe.

But wait… An LLM can’t bake cheesecakes, nor if it could would it be able to evaluate their deliciousness.

Until AI can solve the “God Cheesecake” problem, I propose we all just calm down a bit about AGI

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These cookies were very good, not God level. With a bit of investment and more modern techniques I think you could make quite a good recipe, perhaps doing better than any human. I think AI could make a recipe that wins in a very competitive bake-off, but it’s not possible or for anyone to win with all 100 judges.

https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c...

What would you say if the reply was "I need 2 weeks and $5000 to give you a meaningful answer"?

Heck, even theoretically 100% within the limitations of an LLM executing on a computer, it would be world changing if LLMs could write a really, really good short story or even good advertising copy.

They are getting better and better. I am fairly sure the short stories and advertising copy you can produce by pushing current techniques harder will also improve.

I don't know whether current techniques will be enough to 'write a really, really good short story', but I'm willing to bet we'll get there soon enough (whether that'll involve new techniques or not).

TikTok is the digital version of this

I mean... does anyone think that an LLM-assisted program to trial and error cheesecake recipes to a panel of judges wouldn't result in the best cheesecake of all time..?

The baking part is robotics, which is less fair but kinda doable already.

> I mean... does anyone think that an LLM-assisted program to trial and error cheesecake recipes to a panel of judges wouldn't result in the best cheesecake of all time..?

Yes, because different people like different cheesecakes. “The best cheesecake of all time” is ill-defined to begin with; it is extremely unlikely that 100 people will all agree that one cheesecake recipe is the best they’ve ever tasted. Some people like a softer cheesecake, some firmer, some more acidic, some creamier.

Setting that problem aside—assuming there exists an objective best cheesecake, which is of course an absurd assumption—the field of experimental design is about a century old and will do a better job than an LLM at honing in on that best cheesecake.

What would be interesting, is a system that makes some measurement of a person (eg analyse a video of them eating different cheesecakes or talking about their tastes or whatever), and bakes the best cheesecake specifically for them.

Then you can get a panel of 100 people and bake 100 cheesecakes for them.

And you really think an LLM-assisted program that follows experimental design principles wouldn't be able to find the best cheesecake per each judge's tastes and map and optimize the overall heuristic space of cheesecakes to find the best of the group according to multiple metrics..?

Not any better than, say, an ELIZA-assisted program that follows experimental design principles. At that point the LLM is superfluous.

You don't even need AI for that. Try a bunch of different recipes and iterate on it. I don't know what point you're trying to make.

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