Caterers in China Are Using AI To Spot Unhygienic Cooks, Report Says (venturebeat.com)

If you've ever harbored doubts about the hygiene of the cooks flipping your burger and frying your fries, you're definitely not the only one. From a report: Thepaper.cn reports that local authorities in eastern China have tapped artificial intelligence (AI) to clamp down on unsanitary cooks in kitchens -- and to reward those who adhere to best practices. According to the report, a camera-based system currently being piloted in the Zhejiang city of Shaoxing automatically recognizes "poor [sanitation] habits" and alerts managers to offending workers via a mobile app. It's reportedly the fruit of a six-year project -- Sunshine Kitchen -- that seeks to bring transparency to food preparation in catering, hotels, school cafeterias, and restaurants.

Comments

That is a great idea

[SuperKendall]

Some may find that as creepy but honestly if I were a cook I would welcome something that alerted me if I could be doing better with food safety.

Similar to how in coding, I do not mind a plethora of warnings and errors from a compiler, because cleaning those up I can realize if I've started to slack in some ways with regards to good coding habits or proper use of the language at hand.

Food prep is such an area that can make a big difference in public safety though, it's great to see AI being used in this way.

Re:That is a great idea

[lgw]

And if those compiler errors affected your social credit score?

There will always be a positive reason for embracing each creep forward by the totalitarian panopticon. Freedom requires accepting minor harm from others, as the other choice is total control (whether by government or employer, it's not good). Less worrying if it's just your boss doing it, perhaps, until every boss does it at which point it might as well be government.

I've worked directly with the automated systems that monitor the minute-by-minute performance of Amazon warehouse employees. It's creepy as fuck. Humanity will not be made happier by having our every little mistake highlighted by machine. Being constantly observed closely, even by machine, is psychologically damaging.

Re:That is a great idea

[CrimsonAvenger]

Some may find that as creepy but honestly if I were a cook I would welcome something that alerted me if I could be doing better with food safety.

So, how do you feel about TFA, which isn't talking about something to alert the cooks to food safety problems, but alerting the EMPLOYER of the cook to food safety problems caused by the cook?

Myself, I wouldn't mind at all using an app that tried to teach me better food safety by warning me when I was doing something dumb. But I'm not that enamored of the idea of an app to warn my employer that I'm doing something dumb without bothering to let me in on the problem (and attempt to correct it) first....

Snort

[drinkypoo]

Caterers in China Are Using AI To Spot Unhygienic Cooks, Report Says

Real story: China is using machine vision to bypass the problem of corrupt inspectors. And it's a damned good idea, too. It raises the bar for bribery if a machine-interpreted photograph has to be taken of the workplace. To my mind, each and every inspection of basically anything ought to be evidential.