seagreen92
We asked chatGPT to write an average chocolate chip cookie to sample AI baking skills.
ChatGPT. Three weeks ago, I had never heard of ChatGPT. I was in a meeting with other computer science teachers, and one of the hosts brought it up, and asked us what we thought about it, specifically it’s use in public school–quite an awkward feeling on my part because I didn’t know what they were talking about. It was an interesting discussion, and I learned that ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot that can write code, essays, etc and was launched in November 2022. You ask it to write about a topic or write code that will do a certain algorithm and it will write it–amazing.
I was curious about what my college-age kids thought about ChatGPT (like university guidelines, professor’s opinions, etc) and they both created accounts to see what it would do. Well, just the other day, my oldest son had a great idea to have ChatGPT write an average chocolate chip cookie recipe. By average, we are not referring to average as being between delicious and gross, but the average compilation of different chocolate chip cookies that are out there in the digital world.
The recipe that ChatGPT called for butter. I used a dairy-free butter as a substitute–Nucoa buttery sticks. The batter was very light and fluffy, almost the consistency of a thick meringue. I was worried that they would spread super thin. The first batch cooked very quickly, almost like the baking time was too long, and the cookies were very thin and crispy. They were good, but I prefer a thicker cookie. (It would be interesting to see how chilling the dough might have changed the outcome too.
Before I kept baking, I added an extra half cup of flour. The dough was a lot thicker and very tasty (yes, I like cookie dough—that can stay our little secret.) I baked the cookies for 8 minutes instead of the 9 minutes the recipe called for.
What did I think of these cookies? I thought they were average. They were very good, but not my favorite cookies of all time. I preferred them with extra flour and a little less cooking time. I did think the cookie recipe seemed a little familiar, especially when I saw the finished cookie. It reminded of Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies. So, I looked up the recipe.
Drumroll……
It was exactly the same. So, according to ChatGPT, the tollhouse chocolate chip cookie is the average chocolate chip recipe. Here is the link if you want to try them out for yourself-Original NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe (verybestbaking.com)