“a lot of people are just thinking of wine as a beverage” 100% true. It’s an Up or Down vote on whether or not they like the wine, it’s not contemplative, it’s just a drink, like the choices of house, flat, or sparkling water...Hence another spot on point you make…
“AI does it all without the snobbery, intimidation, or gatekeeping many people associate with wine professionals” “It’s easier to use Vivino and get a personalized recommendation without the kind of human connection that can be awkward and patronizing.” I’ll add condescending, passionate, boring, contrived, overcomplicated, etc. It’s a long list of turn-offs, hence the dull and I’ll go with the herd Vivino rating. Now you can blame Vivino/AI/LLM not yourself for making a poor choice. Easy.
(wine)“it’s for a community of insiders who have the right knowledge and vocabulary - and money, which I don’t think we can ever ignore when we’re purveying a luxury product.” And this is the rub.
We are insiders who speak a different language who have access, either because of our position or because of funding. We also have time to dedicate to the trade, the business of wine. All this combined is a large mote, high barrier to entry.
And therein is the problem. AI is making it easy, like a point score and blurb from a critic, but now with greater justification and rationale, it’s not just one critic, but all of them around the world for as long as we’ve had data and you can ask for the pairing, the notes, the sourcing, the rationale.
We humans have our work cut out for us. Lots of thought provoking stuff in this piece.
Thanks! It's such a mixed bag, because AI could conceivably be pretty effective at democratizing wine by making it easier for the non-insiders to access information, and most of us in the industry do want people to be able to get into wine on their own terms. But then it makes us obsolete and isolates wine drinkers from the uniquely human elements of wine.
"If wine can only create community among insiders and those who are already convinced of its worth, we will quickly be replaced by easy recommendations at everyone else’s fingertips, and no one will ever wonder who created all that information in the first place."
For what it's worth. I'm new to wine. (Also with a very (un)healthy background of religious trauma). I wasn't convinced of its worth before the advent of AI. I only started drinking it a few months ago. I had no idea what to expect, and what I am delighted to learn is how human wine is. How meditative it is. How grounding and alive.
So, even as AI marches forward, hopefully people will still find it. In fact, I am optimistic people will. We will want that connection. But it will be a bumpy road, for sure!
Welcome to the world of wine! Glad you found it, and the rich humanity of it. I have no doubt that people will continue to find wine. In fact, in some ways I think AI makes it easier to find wine, get a handle on what you might enjoy, and learn a bit about it. I worry in general that although people *want* connection, we are already struggling to know how to find or create it, and AI further isolates us from real human contact.
Thank god I'm not going to be alone in beating this drum / sounding this alarm, Stacey! The mantra we like to tell ourselves of "it could never replace humans cuz humanity! Emotions! Real biological sensations!" seems like such a religious-style wish-fulfillment, head shoulders-deep in sand. When was the last time any of us cared what the internet or AI was replacing that didn't effect us directly? Now apply that to everyone who isn't already completely invested in the current self-image of the wine trade.
Honestly what I am seeing culturally, not just in wine, is more people who want to limit their human interaction, making AI in all areas more appealing. People often say they want connection and I've read a lot about the "loneliness epidemic," but at the same time, I'm alarmed at how often people actively avoid what were once everyday interactions. Personally I think we should be working against those impulses and toward greater connection and community, but it's an uphill battle. I do still think wine can facilitate connection and community, but with my background in religion, I'm also well acquainted with self-serving romantic fantasies about one's own importance to those who aren't already in the in-crowd. We're not doing ourselves any favors by pretending the average wine drinker is yearning for the uniquely human advantage we have over AI when they go out to buy a bottle.
You raise many good points, but there does seem to be a lot of hysteria about whether AI will "replace" any number of vital reasoning functions we perform daily. As I read your post, it occurred to me that it's been possible for many years to grab your smart phone and see what numerous "experts" felt about a wine you were going to order in a restaurant. What's frequently missing from those reviews is nuance, and I suspected the same with AI. For kicks, I went on ChatGPT and did a search for Meomi Pinot Noir, the ubiquitous Kool-Aid made by the Antichrist family. As I anticipated, the comments were one-sided: they talked about how "popular" it was, how "smooth and approachable," "versatile," etc. If you were to order that wine confidently in a restaurant, you'd never hear anything else about it. But if there was a sommelier and you asked he/she what they thought, you'd get some nuance and probably a better recommendation if you were open to it.
Sure, Vivino certainly isn't a new thing and neither is the basic Google search, and we haven't freaked out about those, and we've used magazines to tell us about wine without talking to humans about it for decades. I don't think I'm getting hysterical about anything, but I am trying to be cautious about my use of AI, and think it's worthwhile to turn a critical eye toward some of its applications, especially those that involve not just replacing human functions but actually stealing human labor and creativity. Simplifying some tasks so we can focus energy on others has always been at the root of invention, and I'm optimistic about how AI might be used in that way, but I also see how easy AI makes it for us all not to think about where our information or our "creations" come from, or the individual or cultural cost of them.
FYI, I sense no hysteria from you (perhaps concern, or just intellectual curiosity). But there are a lot of people who are freaking out about whether AI will replace their jobs, and some have reason to worry. I don't think the restaurant context is worrisome: by the time a guest encounters a sommelier, they've already had personal interactions with a number of people on staff. I believe the customers you have to be concerned about are the generation who have grown up doing everything on their phones, and who see it as a viable substitute for talking to a person.
Oh yes, I've encountered a lot of concern from people who are at some risk of being replaced. Personally I'm generally concerned about the reduced capacity for human interaction that has been exacerbated by some combination of technology, COVID shut-downs, the rise in remote work, and an increasingly transient and isolated culture. Sure, I'd like my work in wine to be sustainable, but it's a broader issue than that.
Is there a possibility here that we/you are missing the unintended consequences of this technology. I’ve interviewed scores of people creating these applications (so far nobody has made a living from it) and every one of them is doing what what you say - building a tool to help people. But I’ve also worked for retailers and distributors. And not one of them would turn down the opportunity to accept advertising money to promote specific brands on a tool like this. Sommeliers get sacked for taking backhanders. But that cash would be part of the appeal of these tools
It's probable that I missed a great deal here, as I wasn't trying to address every possible consequence or benefit of AI. I don't really buy the idea that everyone creating AI-based apps is doing it out of some kind of altruism, although I'm sure some are really trying to help people. As for advertising, I'm not sure whether you're saying that would be a positive or negative outcome? The algorithms already seem to be pushing certain well-known brands, so I'm certain advertising dollars are already flowing. I'm not a big fan of the idea of putting smaller producers at even more of a disadvantage in the market. As you mention, somms get sacked for that kind of behavior, and I think it's unethical from AI as well.
I'm worried there's a lack of realism on the part of developers (and their advocates) and that people don't realise that not everyone is playing their game. I've been involved in digital/sommelier applications since 2012 and interviewed scores of people. They all say they want something to "do what a sommelier does". But the first question every retailer says when they install them is "how can we charge brands to advertise on it?" Developers are playing cricket while brands play baseball. What bugs me - I'm writing a book right now about sommeliers and have interviewed 100's - is that they're seen as disposable in pursuit of everyone's unicorn digital AI sommelier dream. And yet we can already see the seeds of enshittification in the very DNA of the apps people are creating.
Ah, I see where you were headed now. I don't know much at all about the development side, but I do know enough about brands, retailers, and distributors to know that they'll choose to do whatever will get them more profits, and that will likely come at the expense of both the creators on one end of the chain and the somms and other "replaceable" customer-facing wine professionals at the other.
But how do brands giving money to AI app creators to promote said brands help Somms in specific, Joe? I'm authentically not following the logic there.
As for AI tools - the individual creators may not be earning a living yet, but the AI itself are powered by massive corproate interests, it's like asking why the iOS ecosystem is a problem when all the individual app developers aren't making much money off it. Which in itself showcases one of the major ethical dilemmas of the whole platform / foundational technology, which then additionally displaces currently employed workers. If anything, the fact that the tool developers aren't even profitable while this is occuring makes the whole situation even sadder.
That's not the logic. Brands giving money to AI app creators is another nail in the coffin of sommeliers. What I'm saying is that AI app creators (and I've interviewed scores of them and worked for several) all have some high-minded notion that they're going to create a tool that gives dispassionate advice. But every retailer or restaurant that installs the app immediately says "how can I make advertising revenue off this thing?" I was in a conference yesterday and it was the *very first* question asked about digital assistants in wine aisles.
You're dead on. I did some digging last year for an MBA-type course I wrote. Bev Alc retail has the lowest margins of any sector on the high street. (Jewellry has the highest). Restaurants have among the highest failure rates of any business on the high street. And at the top end, the biggest contribution per employee comes from the wine spend (arguably the overwhelming majority if you take half the gross margins and about 10% of the staffing cost). People kind of get that AI/digital assistants can be used to reduce headcount. But it's less obvious that they would become a revenue source in themselves. In an oversupplied wine market fighting for share and volume, it's an open goal for brands.
I agree with you on the issue of the platforms. I am of the view (as in this post) that creating "wrappers" like AI sommeliers is a waste of time anyway. All that training data is simply making the base application better at doing the job than your "wrapper" can ever do it on its own. Why build an AI sommelier out of LLM's if the underlying LLM application can do it better anyway? As well as everything else. But in the meantime, we get a lot of hyperstitious nonsense about how sommeliers are all "intimidating" and snobby and how much better the world would be if you could order wine while looking at your phone rather than talking to a human being who's devoted their life to trying to make you happy. It's dystopian. https://open.substack.com/pub/davefriedman/p/why-openai-will-eat-all-the-gpt-wrappers?r=92o7j&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Why do you say “Human connection drew many of us into the industry” of yourself, but then dismiss sommeliers as being gatekeepers who act with snobbery. Is is maybe just possible that sommeliers also were drawn to the industry for the human connection or are they only allowed to be caricatures?
I was talking about public perception of snobbery, not the core of sommeliers' identity or behavior. There's certainly enough gatekeeping and snobbery around to keep the stereotype alive, but I'm well aware that those are not the defining characteristics of all - or even most - people in the industry.
You’ve got lots of memorable quotes…
“a lot of people are just thinking of wine as a beverage” 100% true. It’s an Up or Down vote on whether or not they like the wine, it’s not contemplative, it’s just a drink, like the choices of house, flat, or sparkling water...Hence another spot on point you make…
“AI does it all without the snobbery, intimidation, or gatekeeping many people associate with wine professionals” “It’s easier to use Vivino and get a personalized recommendation without the kind of human connection that can be awkward and patronizing.” I’ll add condescending, passionate, boring, contrived, overcomplicated, etc. It’s a long list of turn-offs, hence the dull and I’ll go with the herd Vivino rating. Now you can blame Vivino/AI/LLM not yourself for making a poor choice. Easy.
(wine)“it’s for a community of insiders who have the right knowledge and vocabulary - and money, which I don’t think we can ever ignore when we’re purveying a luxury product.” And this is the rub.
We are insiders who speak a different language who have access, either because of our position or because of funding. We also have time to dedicate to the trade, the business of wine. All this combined is a large mote, high barrier to entry.
And therein is the problem. AI is making it easy, like a point score and blurb from a critic, but now with greater justification and rationale, it’s not just one critic, but all of them around the world for as long as we’ve had data and you can ask for the pairing, the notes, the sourcing, the rationale.
We humans have our work cut out for us. Lots of thought provoking stuff in this piece.
Thanks! It's such a mixed bag, because AI could conceivably be pretty effective at democratizing wine by making it easier for the non-insiders to access information, and most of us in the industry do want people to be able to get into wine on their own terms. But then it makes us obsolete and isolates wine drinkers from the uniquely human elements of wine.
"If wine can only create community among insiders and those who are already convinced of its worth, we will quickly be replaced by easy recommendations at everyone else’s fingertips, and no one will ever wonder who created all that information in the first place."
For what it's worth. I'm new to wine. (Also with a very (un)healthy background of religious trauma). I wasn't convinced of its worth before the advent of AI. I only started drinking it a few months ago. I had no idea what to expect, and what I am delighted to learn is how human wine is. How meditative it is. How grounding and alive.
So, even as AI marches forward, hopefully people will still find it. In fact, I am optimistic people will. We will want that connection. But it will be a bumpy road, for sure!
Welcome to the world of wine! Glad you found it, and the rich humanity of it. I have no doubt that people will continue to find wine. In fact, in some ways I think AI makes it easier to find wine, get a handle on what you might enjoy, and learn a bit about it. I worry in general that although people *want* connection, we are already struggling to know how to find or create it, and AI further isolates us from real human contact.
Thank god I'm not going to be alone in beating this drum / sounding this alarm, Stacey! The mantra we like to tell ourselves of "it could never replace humans cuz humanity! Emotions! Real biological sensations!" seems like such a religious-style wish-fulfillment, head shoulders-deep in sand. When was the last time any of us cared what the internet or AI was replacing that didn't effect us directly? Now apply that to everyone who isn't already completely invested in the current self-image of the wine trade.
Honestly what I am seeing culturally, not just in wine, is more people who want to limit their human interaction, making AI in all areas more appealing. People often say they want connection and I've read a lot about the "loneliness epidemic," but at the same time, I'm alarmed at how often people actively avoid what were once everyday interactions. Personally I think we should be working against those impulses and toward greater connection and community, but it's an uphill battle. I do still think wine can facilitate connection and community, but with my background in religion, I'm also well acquainted with self-serving romantic fantasies about one's own importance to those who aren't already in the in-crowd. We're not doing ourselves any favors by pretending the average wine drinker is yearning for the uniquely human advantage we have over AI when they go out to buy a bottle.
i totally agree with you! In most cases, I hope we never lose the human connection!
You raise many good points, but there does seem to be a lot of hysteria about whether AI will "replace" any number of vital reasoning functions we perform daily. As I read your post, it occurred to me that it's been possible for many years to grab your smart phone and see what numerous "experts" felt about a wine you were going to order in a restaurant. What's frequently missing from those reviews is nuance, and I suspected the same with AI. For kicks, I went on ChatGPT and did a search for Meomi Pinot Noir, the ubiquitous Kool-Aid made by the Antichrist family. As I anticipated, the comments were one-sided: they talked about how "popular" it was, how "smooth and approachable," "versatile," etc. If you were to order that wine confidently in a restaurant, you'd never hear anything else about it. But if there was a sommelier and you asked he/she what they thought, you'd get some nuance and probably a better recommendation if you were open to it.
Sure, Vivino certainly isn't a new thing and neither is the basic Google search, and we haven't freaked out about those, and we've used magazines to tell us about wine without talking to humans about it for decades. I don't think I'm getting hysterical about anything, but I am trying to be cautious about my use of AI, and think it's worthwhile to turn a critical eye toward some of its applications, especially those that involve not just replacing human functions but actually stealing human labor and creativity. Simplifying some tasks so we can focus energy on others has always been at the root of invention, and I'm optimistic about how AI might be used in that way, but I also see how easy AI makes it for us all not to think about where our information or our "creations" come from, or the individual or cultural cost of them.
FYI, I sense no hysteria from you (perhaps concern, or just intellectual curiosity). But there are a lot of people who are freaking out about whether AI will replace their jobs, and some have reason to worry. I don't think the restaurant context is worrisome: by the time a guest encounters a sommelier, they've already had personal interactions with a number of people on staff. I believe the customers you have to be concerned about are the generation who have grown up doing everything on their phones, and who see it as a viable substitute for talking to a person.
Oh yes, I've encountered a lot of concern from people who are at some risk of being replaced. Personally I'm generally concerned about the reduced capacity for human interaction that has been exacerbated by some combination of technology, COVID shut-downs, the rise in remote work, and an increasingly transient and isolated culture. Sure, I'd like my work in wine to be sustainable, but it's a broader issue than that.
Is there a possibility here that we/you are missing the unintended consequences of this technology. I’ve interviewed scores of people creating these applications (so far nobody has made a living from it) and every one of them is doing what what you say - building a tool to help people. But I’ve also worked for retailers and distributors. And not one of them would turn down the opportunity to accept advertising money to promote specific brands on a tool like this. Sommeliers get sacked for taking backhanders. But that cash would be part of the appeal of these tools
It's probable that I missed a great deal here, as I wasn't trying to address every possible consequence or benefit of AI. I don't really buy the idea that everyone creating AI-based apps is doing it out of some kind of altruism, although I'm sure some are really trying to help people. As for advertising, I'm not sure whether you're saying that would be a positive or negative outcome? The algorithms already seem to be pushing certain well-known brands, so I'm certain advertising dollars are already flowing. I'm not a big fan of the idea of putting smaller producers at even more of a disadvantage in the market. As you mention, somms get sacked for that kind of behavior, and I think it's unethical from AI as well.
I'm worried there's a lack of realism on the part of developers (and their advocates) and that people don't realise that not everyone is playing their game. I've been involved in digital/sommelier applications since 2012 and interviewed scores of people. They all say they want something to "do what a sommelier does". But the first question every retailer says when they install them is "how can we charge brands to advertise on it?" Developers are playing cricket while brands play baseball. What bugs me - I'm writing a book right now about sommeliers and have interviewed 100's - is that they're seen as disposable in pursuit of everyone's unicorn digital AI sommelier dream. And yet we can already see the seeds of enshittification in the very DNA of the apps people are creating.
Ah, I see where you were headed now. I don't know much at all about the development side, but I do know enough about brands, retailers, and distributors to know that they'll choose to do whatever will get them more profits, and that will likely come at the expense of both the creators on one end of the chain and the somms and other "replaceable" customer-facing wine professionals at the other.
But how do brands giving money to AI app creators to promote said brands help Somms in specific, Joe? I'm authentically not following the logic there.
As for AI tools - the individual creators may not be earning a living yet, but the AI itself are powered by massive corproate interests, it's like asking why the iOS ecosystem is a problem when all the individual app developers aren't making much money off it. Which in itself showcases one of the major ethical dilemmas of the whole platform / foundational technology, which then additionally displaces currently employed workers. If anything, the fact that the tool developers aren't even profitable while this is occuring makes the whole situation even sadder.
That's not the logic. Brands giving money to AI app creators is another nail in the coffin of sommeliers. What I'm saying is that AI app creators (and I've interviewed scores of them and worked for several) all have some high-minded notion that they're going to create a tool that gives dispassionate advice. But every retailer or restaurant that installs the app immediately says "how can I make advertising revenue off this thing?" I was in a conference yesterday and it was the *very first* question asked about digital assistants in wine aisles.
Ahhhh, I'm with you now. That is an interesting divide in, um, interest between the camps. Pay to play dies hard, especially when margins be thin.
You're dead on. I did some digging last year for an MBA-type course I wrote. Bev Alc retail has the lowest margins of any sector on the high street. (Jewellry has the highest). Restaurants have among the highest failure rates of any business on the high street. And at the top end, the biggest contribution per employee comes from the wine spend (arguably the overwhelming majority if you take half the gross margins and about 10% of the staffing cost). People kind of get that AI/digital assistants can be used to reduce headcount. But it's less obvious that they would become a revenue source in themselves. In an oversupplied wine market fighting for share and volume, it's an open goal for brands.
I agree with you on the issue of the platforms. I am of the view (as in this post) that creating "wrappers" like AI sommeliers is a waste of time anyway. All that training data is simply making the base application better at doing the job than your "wrapper" can ever do it on its own. Why build an AI sommelier out of LLM's if the underlying LLM application can do it better anyway? As well as everything else. But in the meantime, we get a lot of hyperstitious nonsense about how sommeliers are all "intimidating" and snobby and how much better the world would be if you could order wine while looking at your phone rather than talking to a human being who's devoted their life to trying to make you happy. It's dystopian. https://open.substack.com/pub/davefriedman/p/why-openai-will-eat-all-the-gpt-wrappers?r=92o7j&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Why do you say “Human connection drew many of us into the industry” of yourself, but then dismiss sommeliers as being gatekeepers who act with snobbery. Is is maybe just possible that sommeliers also were drawn to the industry for the human connection or are they only allowed to be caricatures?
I was talking about public perception of snobbery, not the core of sommeliers' identity or behavior. There's certainly enough gatekeeping and snobbery around to keep the stereotype alive, but I'm well aware that those are not the defining characteristics of all - or even most - people in the industry.