Peel the Label – AI

I like cool architectural designs and home interiors. I am also a fan of nature photography. Both of which are easily manipulated or entirely created by Artificial Intelligence.

Don’t count me in the AI enthusiasts club but don’t count me in the scared of it club either. Mostly because both of those clubs seem to be talking not about AI today but about AI in some nebulous future. Because currently, AI be janky as hell.

How does this relate to beer you might ask. There have already been AI generates beer recipes and probably some AI labels as well. Some beer writers have toyed with tasking AI to write a beer piece.

But all that is predicated on earlier content. Much like this very blog, AI must draw content. I need a brewery to brew a new beer, or for there to be a festival or a silly gadget otherwise what do I highlight or comment on? And that is what AI needs.

For example, you can ask AI to design a taproom layout. All it can do is maybe (if it is actually learning) use a size dimension alongside examples of other taprooms it has scraped from the web to create an amalgam of a layout. It cannot take into account so many things. AI cannot know how customers in your area will behave in it. It cannot incorporate nods or Easter eggs about the community. It cannot find a happy medium between two owners.

The only way AI can be effective is if you plug so many variables into it that you won’t get an actual response OR you plug in a generic ask and then work from the response as a mere base. And either way, guess who will actually do the work? An actual person.

There are a lot of cool things that computers can do but they still cannot be an actual person.

Peel the Label is an infrequent series with no photos or links. Just opinion.

BeerGPT

We have all seen the sub-par beer names. The lazy ones, the sexist ones, the puns for days ones. Maybe we need to have AI on the case. It is passing certification tests left and right, so why not…

Here is one you can try…

AI & Beer

Don’t think I will be too worried about AI in beer writing if Beer Geek AI is any indication.

The link above sends you to an article about wort becoming beer in such an excited tone that you worry for the exclamation points. The headlines for each post also give away that it is some weird affectation as well.

But, who knows, maybe the next version will fix those flaws.

The 1st Firkin of 2023

Speak for 11 seconds otherwise Skynet will know that you are inebriated. Confused? Read THIS, then come back.

Now, my first inclination is to think that the creators of this speech recognition software are tooting their horn a little bit too much. I am thinking of early lie detector tests where foolproof claims were made that just could not be backed up. Primarily because body reactions may not be about what you are being asked but what someone is afraid will be learned.

A person could have just gotten a yes to a date proposal, for example, and be really giddy. Maybe as giddy as I get when tipsy. Or they could have been told no and start mumbling. Would that trigger as an alcohol caused speech pattern.

And going back to my happier mood, how does the AI know my baseline? And what if I am particularly happy because my birthday month starts tomorrow? How does that factor in?

As with the lie detector, this inebriation sensor might be good as part of an overall set of proofs, not as a sole one.

The Beer is Sentient

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What am I talking about? The IntelligentX Brewing Company, in Britain which is a weird (even for beer) collaboration between two not-breweries, a machine learning startup Intelligent Layer and creative agency 10x.

In a world first, IntelligentX is creating beer using a combination of data science and Artificial Intelligence. So far it’s created Golden, Amber, Pale and Black variants — and it is using some cutting-edge technology to do so.

Basically, IntelligentX’s has a decision making algorithm with the boring name of ABI that customer feedback data from a Facebook Messenger program to spit out what should be brewed next. Typical British styles like Golden, Amber, Pale and Black have been done so far. They also have “wild-card” ingredients that can be added and as more beer is produced, supposedly, a clear picture is seen as to what should be brewed more.

What it doesn’t seem to take into account is popularity of style in a city or region, the weather forecast or weather there is a holiday or big football match going on. Those being three data points that could affect whether a person picks up a pint or not. And that leads to the other missing data, those people who DON’T order your beer.

Will it succeed in London? The beers are available and there are brewery tours and events on their schedule.