Hundreds of ceramic plates stacked from the floor to the ceiling with piles covering the entire kitchen. A girl sat on a plate, extending her doodles to cover up the entire ceiling.
Besides her, a smiling boy rubbed his stomach, eyeing an empty terracotta pot that navigated the complex maze of plates, which stopped right before him.
A cat sprung up from the pot. Its computer voice spoke: “Order for Sandeep!”
Sandeep took his dessert: “Now I have Bing Chilling! I’m loving these ChatGPT recipes!”
“What if there was an entire restaurant of AI-Generated Confectionery!” The girl thought out loud, “First, we use AI to generate an image. Next, we stamp the image onto a cake, the cake recipe also being generated by AI.”
She grabbed a marker and doodled on the side walls. ”Here’s a customer. He scans a code to order on his phone. When it’s ready, Cat in a Jar delivers his food. When he’s done, he places the plate into a conveyor belt, which is then taken into the kitchen and cleaned by a robotic arm.”
The girl continued brainstorming, “Compared to a traditional bakery with trained chefs, we could reduce labour costs. Compared to experimenting with new recipes at home, we could save time. #efficiency++!”
Sandeep gazed at the doodles. His expression turned more sombre and remained silent for a long while before finally speaking: “Brinda, these are great ideas. . .but it will be complicated with your menace-to-society status.”
Brinda knew this would be mentioned. “Sandeep, even you are getting brainwashed by social media! You knew me for my entire life—I only wanted to leave the earth better than I found it. I’m not a hacker, a menace or a psychopath!”
Sandeep paused for almost too many seconds, but cheered: “That’s the spirit! You’ll have my support.”
Three people showed up at the door—A friend who loved baking, a web developer, a robotics person, and a social media guy. The web developer was a scrawny kid that resembled a witty garden gnome, running around doing backflips while wildly announcing to meet at 6 am every single day.
…
Brinda sketched a plan for the AIGC restaurant on a paper towel.
Phase 1: Define objectives. Identify target audience and competitors. Key performance indicators (KPIs), revenue streams. What is the business model? Talk to experts knowledgeable about autonomous restaurants, AI, and creating restaurants.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
Phase 2: Gather initial requirements. Survey potential customers’ interests.
Phase 3: Build a minimum viable product (MVP). Customers can define parameters, specify an image and have AI generate the cake.
Phase 4: Collect feedback on recipe accuracy, taste, and usability and improve the AI model, user interface (UI) and recipe generation algorithms.
…
Team meeting later in the week:
Professional baker was glumly updating her progress to the team.
“When I got the AI to make a jelly cake, it gave me so much flour and milk that I didn’t use!” She paused. “It told me to split the cake mix in half and combine them right after. It told me to use eggs even after they’ve been used up! In the end, it made a smoothie rather than a jelly cake.”
“Yo pass me that cake, I’m starving af right now!” Social media guy commented. He gasped and exclaimed: “There’s gum on the sides of my chair! Wh—” A panic erupted in the team and everyone was talking over each other.
Robotics kid commented: “There’s no world model and it’s inventing extraneous steps.”
“You ain’t got a clue what you’re on about.” Garden gnome refuted due to Robotics kid’s absence in all team meetings. He fired up his laptop: “Yo, check out this sick website template, but it’s costing a solid 99 bucks. Good thing I got that GitHub Student Developer Pack for a free domain; Now I can straight-up copy the template by hand. But ngl, I’m kinda iffy about the backend.”
“Forget about your website, let’s focus on that interest survey!” Sandeep talked over him.
“I don’t know. . .” Professor baker expressed, her head in her hands, “I’d rather not have something of bad quality associated with my name.”
Oh my goodness! Brinda thought the office was full of ADHD cats zooming around and chasing light spots!
At 6 am on the next day, Brinda was alone in the office.
“Running late today!” —Social media guy.
“Sorry, but I may have to take a step back. It’s exam season.” —Professional baker
Nothing from Garden Gnome, but his status was set to: Watching Attack on Titan at 4 am is such a vibe.
Brinda called Sandeep.
“Sandeep, where are you?”
“I’m at home, doing nothing productive,” Sandeep answered depressingly. However, Sandeep was not very depressed; He was working on a frog terrarium, and wondered why the frogs looked skinnier than yesterday.
“My most loyal supporter! You’re ditching me as well.” Brinda expressed.
“There’s no point in continuing,” Sandeep answered with deep melancholy. He lifted a goldfish from his family’s tank and put it into the frog terrarium, “Everybody in the team just wanted to get a free ride spending the least time and money. If I do the work, then I’m going to get fractional benefits.
It’s like when everyone starts to spend 200 hours on their applications so you have to do it too.”
“They just sound more horrifying then actually are. I can establish rules and kick slackers out of the group. We got to make an MVP. I could ask my family for help.” Brinda insisted.
“Well, I suppose you’re right. I’m sorry for slacking off.” Sandeep apologized, his brows furrowed as he watching a frog chugging the goldfish down its mouth. The fish struggled for freedom with all its might. When it vanished, a grin slowly spread to occupy Sandeep’s face.