The New York Times has approximately 6,000 employees, of which over 2,000 work in engineering. In the AI era, each engineer can output 5 to 10x as much as before, and there are more employees than work to be done. Hence employees work pet projects like this one, that few users are asking for.

> Say you’re cooking braised white beans and greens with parmesan, NYT Cooking app in hand. But you notice that you’re out of chard and only have spinach. Cooking veterans know that chard is a rough-and-tumble green that has some backbone2, while spinach is a comparative wimp that will wilt the moment you look at it funny. If you need to sub in spinach for chard, how would the recipe change? Would you, for instance, add the spinach later than you would the chard to account for its pathetic stamina? That’s the sort of thing the new AI feature could account for.

Frankly I can see how this would be useful to some people. At least it would help prevent the ridiculous "I didn't have eggs so I added applesauce, the cake came out all flat IDK what's wrong" type of substitutions.

It is so exaggerated and silly to ask for it to be turned off.

It’s completely optional and you only might want to use it if you change the recipe.

Some of these users are overreacting ridiculously to ai.

It seems to be a non-invasive assistant to augment the human-created, human-curated recipes they give.

I think NYT Cooking recipes are sometimes... not that great anyway, I think some of their cooking techniques are sub-par.

As for this quote from a mad user: “Anyone using AI for cooking has no sense of taste and no desire to work out the intricacies of cooking and baking”

What a horrible take! I use AI to remind me of certain simple tips I haven't written down, to give substitution advice, the exact kind of stuff NYT app says it's going to do. I learned to cook through Youtube chefs, some book recipes, and I cook for the fun of it and to eat good food. How judgemental to say that someone using AI to learn isn't interested in food!