Abstract

  Path to dependence.. Nom Norm started off as a knowledge base of a few dishes with my personal review for a class called Imaginated and Distributed learning taught by Mr Clay Shirky.The project was in a form of an excel sheet with a pivot table and it could be interacted upon in limited ways.   As I always have been intrigued about AI and an active researcher of the field, I wanted to create an assistant enabled by a large language model.This led me to find a use case that I am a passionate to build my experience around and Nom Norm was the best match. What was even better that I will be able to bring these passions of mine for the thesis project. Hello and Welcome to the Primee Show! Primee is the main actor of the show, its an AI enabled voice chatbot which steers the users away from eating pizza and takes them on a food journey by providing easy to prepare dishes, steps to prepare with prior user's rating and experience. It likes to know what you eating, why you eating and how much you eating to make sure the gut is happy and healthy. Primee essentially means prioritise me putting the user at the centre to make choices which are sustainable in nature in return addressing a very big issue of our time. Its ok to play with your food! The dish discovery process which is inherent to the experience is primarily based on parameters of meal preference, ingredients and portion size.Its a process to connect user to themselves through food and its many possibilities. With 14000 dishes in the knowledge base the pattern matching can be endless and that's where the AI is useful as it can really allow the diner to learn and explore more about food.  

Research

In my early research, I wanted to get to the bottom of how a machine understands and responds in a human way.It was pretty awesome to figure out the machine learning algorithm to recognise speech, understand it and respond to build on the conversation with the user. The library of scriptures and voice recordings that are used to build the large language models are gargantuan for any human brain to fathom with and that's the beauty of machine and AI that it can grasp all the material and make patterns for coherent conversation if not always logical and of course there is a possibility of a misunderstanding and it cant be ruled out ever.

Technical Details

primee is built using a large language model and knowledge base of 14000 dishes scraped from the web with all the meta data tags that I mentioned earlier for pattern matching to deliver finger licking good dishes if not the drooling kind which will improve the mood and relationship with food of the diner. Another important aspect of the project was to provide a persona to the voice bot, a character which can convey humorously.The intent is to make the entire interaction feel more like an experiential meal by showcasing the theatrical, magical, emotional and storytelling elements.Its so important to get inside the mind of the diner in order to understand and manage their expectations about food, ultimately it is the interaction between what is in the mouth and what is in the mind that determines what the final tasting experience is like, and how much we enjoy it. The sense of taste turns out to be so much more than merely a matter of taste. Few Key research areas : Social and cultural implications of Food - The Food Culture Healthful vs Mindful eating The secret sauce of okinawa- Hara hachi Bu ( stop at 80% ) Intuitive eating techniques Emotional vs Physical eating The 5 eating principles for max food engagement - self respect / life satisfaction / optimism & wellbeing / low disordered eating / eating culture right Sensory eating - eye | gaze at food , touch | feel with fingers , nose | smell the aroma , Tongue | savour the taste , Ears | listen to what you eat Eating as process oriented and not outcome driven - being in the moment  ( Zen eating ) Appreciation adding more value to the same food - scientifically Non judging | patience | beginner’s mind | trust | non striving | acceptance | letting Go - as key principles to enhance food Experience