AI Microwave Helper

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With the help of AI, I’m eating more hot meals than ever! I’m slowly getting to the point where I’m eating a hot meal everyday. Woohoo!

Lemme explain… I find it really hard to use the microwave… while I understand how they work at a technical level, I struggle to instinctively guesstimate how long things should be cooked for… especially when reheating leftovers etc.

With that in mind, I’ve been working on a little AI tool to help me. It’s working pretty well so here’s a blog post about what I’ve been up too!

Ewww, AI

AI is a tricky beast. It’s a broad term covering a heap of technologies, some of which are useful, many of which are not.

For the last few months I’ve been experimenting with locally running Large Language Models (LLM). It’s sort of like ChatGPT, but it runs entirely on my Mac and uses a fraction of the power and data etc.

I can connect to the Mac from my phone and I have a dedicated screen for asking questions about microwaving things.

It looks like this:

a screenshot of a black web page with the text ‘microwave helper’ in the middle and the tagline ‘A tool to help with microwaving food correctly’. Beneath the text is a box of typing text into.

When I want to microwave something, I ask if for help with a question along the lines of:

How long should I microwave a medium slice of Pizza Hut pepperoni which has been in the fridge

It then replies with

To make your pizza hot and yummy, microwave it for 20-25 seconds. Check if it’s hot enough, if not, add 5 more seconds. Be careful, it might be hot!

A screenshot showing the same black webpage as before, now with the questions and answers above

Tada. That’s about it… I’ve set it up so it already knows the power of my microwave and will reply with short easy to read instructions.

Does it work?

Yeah… it seems to work pretty well.

I’ve only been testing it for about a month and it seems to be accurate for reheating things.

I’m eating more hot meals because of the help it offers. I can ask it questions when other people aren’t around or when people are busy.

The confidence reheating leftovers has been really useful. It’s probably saved me some money by giving me access to leftovers I used to avoid (or eat cold).

Is this safe?

Nope. This isn’t safe.

I think about this tool the same way I think about knives.

In the hands of a surgeon or a cook, a knife is a useful tool. Maybe even life saving.

In the hands of someone else, a knife can cause a lot of harm. Maybe even kill someone.

To make the most of either I need to use them carefully. The safety comes from how I use it as the tool itself is pretty dangerous.

With that in mind… I go into this very skeptical. I don’t entirely trust it and if I’m not sure of its answers, I ask someone for help.

When I created the tool I had a few safety related things in mind. I’ve set it up so it is cautious and will tell the user if it doesn’t know something.

For example if I ask it:

How long should I microwave an entire moose head for?

It replies with:

I don’t know. Microwaving a whole moose head is not something you should do, and I’m not sure if it’s safe or possible. Moose heads are very big and not meant to be microwaved.

It’s a start, but there’s lots of work to do to make this tool safer. It’s not safe enough for me to be comfortable sharing it with other people.

What next?

The tool is very useful already. In the grand scheme of things, I’m not asking it for anything super complicated.

However there are a few things I’d like to improve in the future.

  1. The first is to preload the tool with some extra data on the specific foods I eat most often and how they should be cooked. I’m not sure how best to do this in an ethical legal way so I’m getting some external hell and advice.

  2. The second improvement would be to build a little iPhone app around it. I’m currently using an ‘off the shelf’ user interface to make it work on my phone. It’s a bit clunky. A simple app would make it much easier to use. It’s the sort of thing I can easily build in an afternoon :)

  3. Finally, I’d like it too work based on photos of food so I don’t need to describe the food myself. This one will need a bit of work, but it should be possible with the tools I have.

Final thoughts.

I’m sceptical of AI and I don’t like the current “AI everything” trend. I have concerns about the power and water usage as well as the business models and practices of folks like OpenAI.

I’m very deliberately using only open source tools with ‘open weight’ models. Tools which are free for everyone to use and build on. It all runs privately on my own computer and it doesn’t use much power.

I’m experimenting with these tools so I can learn about them and develop my opinion over time.

I’m curious about how AI tools can help with the little day to day barriers I experience as an autistic adult. I’m not interested in using generative AI to generate art or write books etc.

I think curiosity is good. The fact I’m eating more hot meals due to AI is a bit of a surprise. It’s nice when the AI is helpful and I’m excited to see what happens next.

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Spaced Out & Smiling is about exploring the fun side of Autism, and trying to understand what it means to be Autistically Happy.

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Jamie: @JamieKnight
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