Can replicators remix food?

[FreddyE]

Okay...replicated food is a transporter scan made from the real thing. But what happens if lets say...I want "bacon with peas" instead of "bacon with eggs"...but
the replicator only has a "bacon with eggs" file? Would it somehow automatically look up the seperate file for "just peas" and the one for "just bacon", and then replicate
first the bacon and then the peas?

That would work for food thats just put next to each other...but what if its something more complicated? Where ingredients are mixed? Something like..."Mango Chicken Tikka" is on file..but I ask for it to be made with some mashed apple added to the souce.

Would I get a reply by the computer "This is not on file. Please ask the replication items scanning center at a starbase to prepare and scan this item for you"?

 

[Christopher]

I think we've seen scenes (like maybe Paris ordering soup in the Voyager pilot) indicating that there was a finite menu of varieties, though I'm not sure.

I imagine that something akin to present-day "AI" could be used to make novel combinations. If you can order a holodeck computer to create a new character to order, it stands to reason that replicator computers have similar generative abilities.

 

[NCC-73515]

IIRC, the D replicator didn't even have tea earl grey hot in its database when Picard arrived

 

[Tosk]

We've seen multiple instances of people having to program specific recipes into the replicator, so I'll go with "You can have any combination you want, but sometimes you might have to work for it."

 

[Christopher]

We've seen multiple instances of people having to program specific recipes into the replicator, so I'll go with "You can have any combination you want, but sometimes you might have to work for it."

That is basically how generative AI works, isn't it? By entering enough specific prompts until you get something that matches what you want? So that could be what they mean by "programming." If it's a matter of entering the exact molecular pattern for the food or drink in question, that would be more a matter of uploading a saved file -- like, maybe Picard would have the molecular pattern for tea, Earl Grey, hot in his personal database and would upload it into the replicator system of whatever ship he was assigned to. (Maybe he was so busy with other responsibilities when he took over command in the "All Good Things..." flashbacks that he forgot to do that.) I don't think that would be called "programming," though. (I have the impression that's considered an old-fashioned term today, maybe?)

 

[F. King Daniel]

I imagine the same way we can ask AI to generate a picture of whatever weird shit we can imagine, it can generate whatever food we can imagine.

Without destroying the planet.

 

[Christopher]

Without destroying the planet.

I read somewhere that AI data centers are expected to upgrade to much less power-intensive optical chips in a couple of years, so that problem may be solved or minimized soon, although there are still other problems like the rampant plagiarism (I'm still waiting for my Anthropic settlement check), AI psychosis, lost jobs, and so forth.

I've said this before, but all those TNG episodes about holodecks creating new works of fiction and images based on a few prompts from the users feel much more dystopian today than they did in the 1980s-90s. At least some programs were established to have real authors, like Felix, the creator of the Vic Fontaine program.

If not for the whole "moneyless economy" thing, I'd speculate that maybe professional chefs might prepare dishes that were scanned into replicator databases and would get a royalty every time one of their patterns would used. Then again, I tend to assume that the moneyless economy means that people don't need money to survive, not necessarily that money doesn't exist at all. People would presumably still be free to pursue capitalism as a supplement to whatever universal basic income, free health care and housing, etc. that the Federation provides. Then there's the theory advanced by The Orville, that in a moneyless economy, the main currency is reputation, which is earned by doing meaningful and constructive things. Creating worthwhile works of art, entertainment, or cuisine could certainly qualify.

If there were famous chefs' gourmet recipes in a replicator database, many people might prefer them over whatever modified or improvised recipes they might try to instruct a replicator to generate. If the latter turned out badly, it would give new meaning to the phrase "AI slop."

 

[Takeru]

IIRC, the D replicator didn't even have tea earl grey hot in its database when Picard arrived

That was super weird, it's not like tea is some obscure drink, it really should have been in the database.

And generally speaking with the capabilities the computer in TNG is shown to have mixing and matching ingredients should be easy to do, imagine you ask the computer for a lasagne but to replace the parmesan with pecorino and the computer goes *bwee-oop* "That recipe is not in the database", that would be absurd.

 

[Christopher]

That was super weird, it's not like tea is some obscure drink, it really should have been in the database.

Well, Earl Grey is a specific variety of tea, so they might have had more basic black and green teas but not more specialized blends. Although Earl Grey is pretty popular, so it's still odd that it wouldn't be on the list. Maybe it's become less popular by the 24th century, and Picard is something of a throwback in his tastes.

Maybe the database hadn't been fully installed before the ship launched, though that's probably even weirder. I could buy it if it were like TMP where the ship was launched prematurely, but that wasn't the case with the E-D.

And generally speaking with the capabilities the computer in TNG is shown to have mixing and matching ingredients should be easy to do, imagine you ask the computer for a lasagne but to replace the parmesan with pecorino and the computer goes *bwee-oop* "That recipe is not in the database", that would be absurd.

I'm not sure I buy the idea that you could substitute an ingredient not already in the database and get a successful result. Cooking is a complex chemical process, in which the ingredients change due to heat, time, and intermixing and produce new flavors and textures in the process. You could materialize a copy of a completely cooked meal with a given set of ingredients, but if you just try to substitute an ingredient into the existing pattern and then materialize it in seconds, it wouldn't necessary be authentic to how the ingredient's flavor and texture would transform through the process of cooking. Maybe a sufficiently advanced computer could simulate the cooking process and calculate what its final molecular pattern would probably be, but that might just be a best estimate.

Probably the replicator programmers would try to compile a wide range of recipe variations with different ingredients and cooking styles. I imagine the civilian replicator database would constantly be having new recipes added to it. In a moneyless economy where people don't need to work for a living, they'd have a lot of free time to cook, to experiment with recipes and upload their favorites as shareware replicator patterns, in addition to the professional chefs who had deals with the replicator service providers to supply gourmet recipes. Presumably Starfleet could license those for use on its ships. Although they might prefer to use their own in-house chefs, who would design recipes with optimal nutritional value and suitability for multiple species' consumption -- which might lead to a certain sameness and create the perception that replicated food is blander than the real thing, even though it's direct scans of the real thing.

 

[korblborp]

since the replicator is supposed to work like a transporter duplication accident, but on purpose... that is to say, the options were first made, then scanned, then later loading up the pattern and beaming it... "programming" a new thing into it ought to involve making it yourself, then getting it scanned in...

but we do see it work differenly sometimes so...

 

[Christopher]

"programming" a new thing into it ought to involve making it yourself, then getting it scanned in...

Which, again, would be more likely called uploading, or just scanning, rather than programming. I mean, when you open a file in Word or Photoshop, you're not actually changing the program that runs the file.

Which, to continue that analogy, would suggest that altering the recipe by instructions to the computer would be more accurately called editing than programming. But we're saddled with terminology from the 1980s-90s, which was probably outmoded even then.

 

[Takeru]

I'm not sure I buy the idea that you could substitute an ingredient not already in the database and get a successful result. Cooking is a complex chemical process, in which the ingredients change due to heat, time, and intermixing and produce new flavors and textures in the process. You could materialize a copy of a completely cooked meal with a given set of ingredients, but if you just try to substitute an ingredient into the existing pattern and then materialize it in seconds, it wouldn't necessary be authentic to how the ingredient's flavor and texture would transform through the process of cooking. Maybe a sufficiently advanced computer could simulate the cooking process and calculate what its final molecular pattern would probably be, but that might just be a best estimate.

We're talking about a computer who can via the transporter dismantle a human body, turn it onto energy and then reassemble it and it does that so detailed not a single neuron is misplaced and every memory and thought the person had before is retained.
Sure, in this case the computer has a template to work with but scanning a human and pinpointing the exact position of every subatomic particle and every electric charge in the body in real time is slightly more complicated than substituting one cheese for another on a lasagne, there's no way I believe the Enterprise computer couldn't figure out how a different cheese would taste after melting and interacting with the other ingredients.
Cooking isn't magic, how different ingredients interact with heat through water, steam, fire etc. and how that affects the ingredients is just physics, so is how ingredients interact with each other.

 

[Christopher]

Sure, in this case the computer has a template to work with but scanning a human and pinpointing the exact position of every subatomic particle and every electric charge in the body in real time is slightly more complicated than substituting one cheese for another on a lasagne, there's no way I believe the Enterprise computer couldn't figure out how a different cheese would taste after melting and interacting with the other ingredients.

Except a replicator doesn't work at the same resolution as a transporter (which is why it can't replicate living things), so that analogy doesn't entirely work. A replicator has to store a large number of patterns, and if it stored them at transporter resolution, it wouldn't have enough memory. (Someone on this BBS once pointed out that storing quantum-level information about every particle in a body would require an equal number of particles.) So a replicator doesn't necessarily have the same computing power as a transporter. Talking about "the Enterprise computer" as if it were a single central mainframe that performs every function on the ship is, well, very 1960s thinking. It's probably more like hundreds of different computers specialized for different tasks.

As I already said, it is conceivable that a sufficiently advanced replicator might be able to simulate the outcome of substituting an ingredient outside its existing database of recipe variations. My point is simply that it would require complex simulation and wouldn't just be a simple matter of one-to-one substitution.

 

[audiefoster87]

I think the generative AI angle makes sense, but the thing that gets me is whether the computer would even try to remix without being told explicitly. Like, you ask for mango chicken tikka with added apple and maybe it just... doesn't. It's not that it *can't* calculate the new molecular pattern, it's that it has no reason to assume you want it to attempt a modification instead of just saying "not on file." The computer's probably conservative about food by design.

 

[FreddyE]

The AI angle really makes sense to me too. This would also help explain why people seem to think that replicated food is "bland" or "missing" something. Maybe replicated food thats been scanned from real cooked food is the closest to the real thing but the more you ask the computer to modify such a scan..the more "AI sloppy" it becomes?

 

[Christopher]

The AI angle really makes sense to me too. This would also help explain why people seem to think that replicated food is "bland" or "missing" something. Maybe replicated food thats been scanned from real cooked food is the closest to the real thing but the more you ask the computer to modify such a scan..the more "AI sloppy" it becomes?

A plausible suggestion. Kind of like how in "Elementary, Dear Data," the computer's first attempt at an original Sherlock Holmes story was an unimpressive genAI-like remix of elements from the existing canon. Then again, in later series, computer-generated holodeck/suite scenarios seemed as complex as ones written by human television writers, and holodeck users seemed satisfied by them. Which would suggest that the AI of that era is more advanced than ours and better able to produce convincing results.

Of course, it ultimately comes down to how the writers choose to portray it, so the technology's abilities can be inconsistent from episode to episode. For instance, how the heck does Janeway manage to replicate a burnt pot roast? Then again, I suppose that's an example of the very thing I suggested -- the computer being able to simulate the chemical changes that ingredients would undergo while being cooked at a certain temperature for a certain amount of time, and then to instantly assemble the molecules in a pattern consistent with the final result. So if Janeway programmed in a pot roast recipe but entered the time or temperature wrong, the computer would have gamely simulated what the end result would look like and thereby replicated a burnt roast. Then again, even if Janeway set the replicator to manual input, you'd think it would flag such mistakes and let Janeway know they were a bad idea.

 

[FreddyE]

Then again, even if Janeway set the replicator to manual input, you'd think it would flag such mistakes and let Janeway know they were a bad idea.

Well...maybe she deactivated that specific security protocol for whatever reason. Makes you wonder if it needs a level 1 security override though. You know how it is..."Girl finds replicated food boring...girl deactivates replicators security protocols..." xD

 

[Christopher]

Well...maybe she deactivated that specific security protocol for whatever reason. Makes you wonder if it needs a level 1 security override though. You know how it is..."Girl finds replicated food boring...girl deactivates replicators security protocols..." xD

I do routinely turn off the spell check in word processors, browsers, etc. (I hate those squiggly red lines), but that's because I'm a good speller and rarely need them. (I still have my second-place semifinalist trophy from my 6th-grade spelling bee!) Janeway, IIRC, burned the roast because she was inexperienced at "cooking" with a replicator. But then, maybe that was why she wanted to try it without a net, so to speak.

 

[The Salt Umpire]

Okay...replicated food is a transporter scan made from the real thing. But what happens if lets say...I want "bacon with peas" instead of "bacon with eggs"...but
the replicator only has a "bacon with eggs" file? Would it somehow automatically look up the seperate file for "just peas" and the one for "just bacon", and then replicate
first the bacon and then the peas?

That would work for food thats just put next to each other...but what if its something more complicated? Where ingredients are mixed? Something like..."Mango Chicken Tikka" is on file..but I ask for it to be made with some mashed apple added to the souce.

Would I get a reply by the computer "This is not on file. Please ask the replication items scanning center at a starbase to prepare and scan this item for you"?

Maybe that's why Pike cooks so much, cause he doesn't like how replicated food tastes?

 

[Jedman67]

Keiko also spends crazy amount of time replicating food.
Maybe she replicated an oven and a KitchenAid?

Replicated food tastes exactly the same, all the time. Homemade food does not because of subtle changes, a few extra grams of garlic powders, a drop less salt. Took it out of the oven 5 minutes early or 5 minutes late. Frozen and reheated.
It tastes the same, of course, but not exactly the same.

I also think people like Eddington are just snooty