Ada Parellada, the renowned chef of the Semproniana restaurant, focused on her task of linking science with the kitchen during the opening ceremony of the Biennale Ciutat i Ciència, exclaimed that "cooking is pure science" and that everything that happens during the processes of elaboration is thanks to her. From the practice of burning sugar to the fermentation of a cheese. In fact, the chef affected this point with the example of a teacher. “I have a friend who teaches her students physics and chemistry with cooking”, she pointed out before the watchful eye of the amphitheater of the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona. Along these lines, the renowned cook used a mixed sandwich as a sign of the scientific evolution of the last two thousand years, where practically everything is obtained thanks to science. And as the best example, the bread that is obtained thanks to a first-order chemical phenomenon.
For the protagonist of the act, cooking becomes not only a derivative of science, but food in general and everything that fills the shopping cart plays a first-rate political role in many fields. "If we understand politics as a tool to do good to as many people as possible, we will see that the products we cook with generate a very important impact in all senses: economic, social, environmental...", explains Parellada. In this sense, the author of Vanilla Salt (Ramon Llull, 2012) remarks that "we have everything within our reach, at any time of the year, packaged and ready to eat, so we must be aware and, as consumers, act accordingly," he says.
Barcelona and Madrid kicked off the Ciutat i Ciència Biennial with two simultaneous conferences from the Raval Center for Contemporary Culture and the Círculo de Bellas Artes, where science shared the limelight with other concepts. In Barcelona, with cooking and in Madrid, with artificial intelligence. In Barcelona they had Ada Parellada, as a prestigious chef, and Josep Perelló, professor of condensed matter and one of the curators of this year's Biennale. 500 kilometers away, José Manuel Sánchez Ron, a physicist and academic from the RAE, and Elena González-Blanco, an expert in artificial intelligence, met.
A few minutes after the opening ceremonies began, a connection was established between both capitals with the purpose of exploring how science interrelates with the kitchen, on the one hand, and with AI, on the other. What ended up becoming a kind of round table where even the kitchen was found to have links with the intellect of the machines.
Parellada, alarmed by the potential of artificial intelligence, prays that the artifice does not end up substituting the human brain and will, one day, replace the skill of a cook. Although for his peace of mind, González-Blanco assured from Madrid that while systems such as ChatGPT suggest chorizo as a basic ingredient for paella, the replacement of cooks will still take a long time to materialize. Instead, Sánchez Ron proposed subjecting AI to creating novel menus and culinary combinations, as it turned out with the development of a new machine learning algorithm -based on artificial intelligence- that was able to create a new antibiotic compound.
The programming of the Ciutat i Ciència Biennial has only just begun and over the next few days more than 120 activities aimed at discovering science and recognizing the direct impact it has on our lives will be held between Barcelona and Madrid.
