Journal of Ethnic Foods 5 (2018) 75
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Journal of Ethnic Foods
journal homepage: http://journalofethnicfoods.net
Editorial
Why Artificial Intelligence is important for ethnic foods?
One famous rhetoric speech has been endlessly mentioning hu-
man being as “the supreme creature among all things” indoctri-
nated through several hundred years by the Christian ideology; in
spite of this, I would certainly not believe in it. It might be in a
certain way inescapable for us from the situation that Evolutionism
and Christianity ironically share with each other ideas of futuristic
way of living for human beings. Technologies developed by human
beings can be culminated that the evolving era of the Anthropocene
protests a new geological era covered by human activities in this
planet. With the new paradigmatic framework of the Anthropocene
in hand, is it the time to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the trium-
phant development by human effort to make the world move bet-
ter? AI replaces divergent facets of human position by means of
“development,” and AI has obviously started to drive out his or
her boss from various aspects of human activities. Let me propose
a question of AI in relation with the ethnic foods in the future.
What is going to happen when AI dominates our history-laden lives
with various environmental and psychological settings in terms of
managing everyday life focusing on foods?
Universality and diversity consist of a set of binary opposition
for each other, and both function to understand the very bottom
of human phenomena through the history of philosophy of science.
In other words, the two have firmly so far kept on a good sense of
balance to promulgate philosophical strength. These days, I observe
a sign of breaking the balance between universality and diversity in
terms of human ideology as AI has strongly been appeared in this
contemporary world. Problem seems to start with the idea of singu-
larity separated from the concept of universality, and the former
would replace the position of the latter. Logically speaking, the
new framework should naturally be turned into a set of
singularityediversity from that of universalityediversity. The new
set will not work out because singularity would dominate diversity,
and furthermore, the former would not permit the position of the
latter in the logical framework. AI is the very case of it which I
have been pursing in this question. It depicts a stage of dangerous
situation within our general framework of way of thinking and ide-
ology, even to define ourselves.
Thinkers surrounding AI seem greatly to rejoice the victory of
the ideology of singularity to neglect philosophically the
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jef.2018.05.001
2352-6181/© 2018 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Korea Food Research Institute. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
universality. I would at this moment suggest a hypothesis that phi-
losophy of singularity waxes whereas that of diversity wanes in due
course of expansion of the fields of AI in the future. There is a factual
segment that AI of any kind only needs energy from electricity to
activate itself. Electric energy should be the only need for AI to
work on. AI does not necessitate especially for venison to treat
someone's birthday party or caviar to celebrate one's wedding cer-
emony for epicurism. Diverse range or varieties of ethnic foods
would not be necessarily allowed in the world of AI. How does
this philosophical change of dominating singularity against diver-
sity affect the field of ethnic foods? AI requests neither shark's fin
nor casu marzu. What can we do with the dramatis personae of
AI for the ethnic foods?
I believe that the cultural diversity of ethnic foods is the fruit of
human wisdom, struggling with the various environments
including sentiment in the long history. AI seems not to be inter-
ested in diversity of ethnic foods. Does AI provide us for risk factors
against the ethnic foods? Risk could be nominally and practically
switched into opportunity. Reinventing the concept of diversity
based on cultures would be guaranteed with the expansion of
ethnic foods across cultures, which is the essence of human culture
even in the world of AI. It must be meaningful for us to consider
deeply the meaning of diversity in relation with ethnic foods to
revitalize human wisdom in history for the future. Let AI consume
the various kinds of ethnic foods. Otherwise, AI sooner or later
should intimidate the ethnic foods and even this journal.
Kyung-soo Chun*
Kanagawa University in Yokohama, Japan
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: korancks@hotmail.com.
Received 7 March 2018
Received in revised form 27 March 2018
Accepted 8 April 2018
Available online 14 May 2018