AI Optimization for Food Products— Old Models, New Tech

I recently read a Wall Street Journal article that detailed how food manufacturers are using Artificial Intelligence to optimize recipes according to desired characteristics such as flavor, aroma and appearance, as well as ingredient costs, environmental impact, and nutritional profile. Such optimization techniques are not new, in fact they employ Linear Programming methods developed as early as 1947. In this article, I discuss how the Simplex model can be used for product optimization, using case studies from my UMass Business Analytics undergraduate course. I also discuss whether LLM’s like ChatGPT are capable of developing new and better models than those developed by humans or whether they will always rely on existing ...