My mother has cooked for me all my life. As I was a picky person when I was but a wee lad, we have had many disagreements on the type of food being served, what vegetables inhabited the meal, how the food looked, and what cuisine was made. Of course, growing up and maturing to some degree, the frequency of these disagreements shrunk, to the point where I was able to eat whatever she made. However, one thing I never took into account until now was the fact that she customized each dish to my particular taste at the particular phase I was in. This is a skill that cannot be downloaded; it must be learned over time. My mother spent years understanding what worked and didn’t work for me, and using this knowledge crafted meals to suit my current taste that satisfied me and filled me to the brim.
Cooking is a very intimate experience. You must know the person you are cooking for. The better you know them, the better you are able to satisfy them through creating a meal. This is the reason why some dates occur in kitchens rather than five-star restaurants; its the reason why home-cooked meals feel so much better than outside food. There is a personalization in creating meals, understanding tastes, flavours, and aesthetics, and designing a meal for individuals or a group.
This personalization brings humans together. It promotes connection, communication, relaxation, and gathering. This focus of humans serving humans has been passed down since we discovered fire. And it will be instilled in our culture and society even when nonhumans—namely, robots—are walking around, interacting with us on a daily basis. When talking about robots replacing all jobs, there are some instances where they will not or cannot replace humans. One of the instances of robots being unable to automate would be when cooking.
Imagine all the things a chef has to go through in order to prepare a meal. They must understand the recipients of the meal, especially any dietary constraints. They must understand the complexity of what the meal represents; the occasion or circumstance the meal is crafted for (no one wants chicken nuggets on their 20th anniversary). The chef must factor in many things that exist outside of the meal. These variables the chef mixes in would not translate into robots. There is a simple reason for this: sensing.
We have all had a moment where we have come home, and our loved ones sensed something was amiss with our behaviour, mood, emotional state, whatever it may be. These loved ones then go and do something nice for us: buy us our favourite dinner, take us to a movie, get us chocolate, etc. These human senses that transcend understanding or science, for that matter, cannot be implemented in robots. Why? Because we must understand what these senses accomplish/how they are communicated before installing them in our personalized robots.
Okay. Maybe there is some truth to the previous statement of robots being unable to replicate humans in sensing human behaviours. Maybe there is some misguidance in my understanding of robots or some pessimism in what robots would be able to accomplish in the near or distant future. Back to cooking.
When creating a meal, chefs must dynamically adjust the meal. Anyone who has baked (not me) knows this. Certain situations require different adjustments that must be made on the fly. The recipe being followed does not account for these adjustments, its simply a boilerplate for the creation. The one that is making it must be attuned to the situation at hand and judge what they need, when they need it. For example, if a chef taste tests a stew and thinks that it needs more salt than the recipe says to put in, he must make a decision: do I stick to the recipe or do what is necessary for the meal to turn out well? Most likely, the latter. This requires taste, an understanding the situation, the meal, the factors surrounding the meal, the complexity of the social dynamics of the meal not turning out as well as he had hoped, the strained relationships of serving a bad meal, etc. Humans make adjustments to better serve humans. Robots would stick to the recipe.
This example illustrates why robots may not be able to replace all jobs. Certain jobs require a deep understanding of humans, and fortunately or unfortunately, the only species that best understandings humans are humans themselves. So, for now, chefs are safe from automation. They can craft intelligent and delicious meals, serve them with the utmost confidence, and at the end of the night, receive the highest compliment there is: a chefs kiss.