I Cooked Against Robots

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Nick DiGiovanni 16 min 2 speakers 3 chapters transcribed

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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Who is the better chef: humans or robots?

Nick 0:00

Robots are becoming more and more like humans. They can build cars, clean your house, and even do parkour. But in this video, I'm cooking against three levels of robots to find out who's the better chef, robots or humans.

Host 0:11

For level one, Mark Rober will be the judge. We're going to see if Nick can beat some of the most basic kitchen robots that money can buy. In level one, we'll have five speed rounds. Chopping, stirring, toasting, pizza making, and cleaning. And to win, it's a classic best three out of five. Are you team robot or team Nick? I mean, of course I am team robot. For this first mini round, we'll be testing chopping skills. And in the robot corner, we've got the Roboku. It's basically an extremely powerful food processor with a couple of googly eyes to boot. I like putting googly eyes on my robots. Are you ready, Nick? Let's do this. Start. No? I said start, yeah. I'm taking my time, I'm not worried. Oh. How many do you want me to put in, Nick?

Host 0:52

I mean, you're team robot. That's true. That feels like a good start. Oh no! That's so fast! Oh my god. I didn't even have the time to put it under. This seems so unfair. Look at that. They're like, Before you actually judge, let's look at our cuts. Yours aren't even real cubes. Those are like rectangular prisms. I mean, this is like laser precision. As a chef, do you want smaller cubes like that or bigger? I mean, it takes more skill to make smaller cubes. I rule in favor of our robot overlord. For speed round number two, we're going to be testing your stirring skills. You will be facing off against an army of five stirring robots, once again with googly eyes.

Nick 1:32

They are very cute. Thank you. Because stirring just one pan wouldn't be much of a challenge, we each have five pans, but there's just one of me and there are five robots. We're going to be stirring pine nuts, which are expensive and burn really easily.

Host 1:44

So the first person to burn their nuts loses. That doesn't sound great. Okay, here we go. Time to turn on the robot army. And as soon as I start smelling and especially seeing burnt pine nuts, somebody's losing. This seems a little unfair again. I don't know. So we're getting good spinning, but the problem is it's just spinning in place and not going to every edge of the pan. Also, I think like two googly eyes have dropped into the pan. That feels like a definite points off situation. I have seen you spill a few nuts, and I don't love that, Nick.

Nick 2:14

Yeah, but your robots aren't even touching the nuts. I actually think I might win this challenge. I'm actually going to do something the robots can't do and switch my pans around to kind of keep things even as well. And the robots, they just don't have arms.

Host 2:26

The robot feet are melting! He's melting! Stove's off, stove's off. What happened here? Disaster on the robot front. It completely charred these pine nuts. And on top of that, the plastic feet melted in the pan. Wow. This is a nice, even golden brown. Let me taste test. That's good. I don't have the courage to try any of these. Plastic's not necessarily my thing. This one's an easy call. Nick. Winner of this round, we're all tied up, heading into speed round number three. For round three, we'll be testing your ability to make toast. It's very simple, but easy to screw up from personal experience. On the robot side, we have this extremely high-tech $500 toaster with a screen. So where's your screen, Nick? On the human side, I have a good old pan with some fire.

How does Nick compete against basic kitchen robots?

Host 3:13

Is that how you actually make toast at home? Yeah. You're so fancy. At the end of this round, I will judge the winner based on looks and taste. Here we go. Oh, wow. Bread, English muffin, waffle, bagel. Hey, do your thing. Don't look over here.

Nick 3:28

And start. Oh, there it goes. So the key to making a nice slice of toast, Mark, while your toaster just slowly takes its sweet time over there, I like to quickly hit both sides of the toast right away. And you have to be very gentle. You don't want to press into the toast. Wait, why tweezers? I'm cooking against a $500 robot.