A SMARTER FOUNDATION THE KITCHEN OF TOMORROW,TODAY

THE BEST AI APPLICATIONS ARE INCORPORATING SPECIALIZED INTELLIGENCE AND TRUST TO MAKE LLMS WORK FOR CORPORATE AMERICA. CLEVER APPLIANCES ARE FULFILLING A LONG-HELD VISION FOR COOKING CONVENIENCE.

GENERATIVE AI models don’t know what they don’t know. For an individual playing around with the tech, that’s an annoyance. For a company, it’s a nightmare. To win over corporate America, the best AI application developers are building their own AI around the foundation model, leveraging unique technology or data to get the good out of LLMS while managing the bad.

Some of the most effective AI applications add domain expertise that doesn’t reside in LLM training data. Casetext’s Cocounsel gets its basic text summarization and writing capabilities from Openai’s GPT-4, but the LLM also has access to “ground truth” information from proprietary databases of verified legal data. Seekr, which makes a search engine that scores news content on its reliability, finetunes its LLM with a large repository of well-reported, well-written news articles.

Building that kind of trust into generative AI is the other essential value that applied AI purveyors are seeking to add.

When Salesforce launched its Einstein AI framework in March 2023, it didn’t just let customers of its popular CRM software bring generative

AI to their sales and marketing. Because many CEOS and

CIOS fear the “leakage” of their valuable intelligence, which resides in Salesforce’s cloud, the company built the Einstein Trust Layer, which masks the proprietary data before it passes through an LLM.

Although Openai and other LLM makers aspire to create “one model to do it all,” AI app developers will use LLMS as just one layer of a larger system. “In an Llmenabled world, it is quite tempting for a large model to feel like a hammer and everything else a nail,” says Chris Kauffman, a partner at the VC firm General Catalyst. “In production, the truth is more nuanced.” —Mark Sullivan

THE 1939 WORLD’S Fair featured a pavilion where GE showcased an all-electric “Magic Kitchen” in which appliances opened their own doors, operated automatically, and talked about themselves. Home cooks of the future, GE promised, would save 10,000 steps per year.

Last year’s technological advancements in consumer goods offer hope that such wizardry has finally arrived in the most important room in the house. Mill’s subscriptionbased compost bin (see page 49), Cruz’s wireless blender, and a stand mixer from, yes, GE Appliances all point to a revival in smart kitchen ingenuity after a decade of mostly underwhelming attempts. “The reality was that in 95% of cases, [new technology] didn’t add anything” to the kitchen, says Hannah Crowley, an executive editor at Cook’s Illustrated, who leads the America’s Test Kitchen product-review team.

But she says product designers seem to have learned that they should solve problems that already exist rather than create new ones to solve. Cruz’s Blendercap, for example, was initially a side project of Apple colleagues who wanted to blend protein shakes after workouts. Blendercap can hold its own in the kitchen, but it also morphs from a high-end portable appliance to a water bottle with a vacuumtight seal that keeps smoothies cold for 24 hours. Smokeless firepit maker Solo Brands, meanwhile, unveiled its first indoor product, Cinder, a food-safe tabletop firepot. As more kitchens go gas-free, there’ll be more opportunities for toasting marshmallows and blistering peppers over Solo’s smokeless pot.

As consumers get accustomed to elements of their home being imbued with intelligence, from the doorbell to the thermostat, appliance makers are starting to rethink what might once have been taken for granted. Moen transformed the kitchen in 1947 by inventing a faucet with individual spouts for hot and cold water. Now, the company’s Smart Water Network offers features such as a touchless faucet sensor to adjust temperature via simple hand motions and an app that can dispense preset water quantities. The latter syncs up with Flo, a home nerve center, to monitor everything from showers to plumbing in the walls—especially handy during a winter freeze.

Expect more mashups, where a breakthrough innovation gets absorbed into appliances as a new feature, says Michael Wolf, editor of The Spoon and the creator of the Smart Kitchen Summit and CES Food Tech Conference. Think conventional ovens adding air fryer technology, for example, or drawing power from a battery wall. The GE Profile Smart Mixer signals where things are going. The first mixer with a built-in scale, it’s a single machine that responds to voice commands, beeps when the proper weight is reached, alerts users when it’s time to add the next ingredient, and stops home bakers from under- or overmixing the bowl’s contents. It’s a little bit of magic right on the countertop—and it comes in three colors. —Clint Rainey

BATTERIES ARE HOT right now—like really, really hot. Longlasting, durable, and lightweight storage devices will be an essential part of the global energy transition, yet the tendency of lithium-ion cells to catch fire and explode is only one issue with our most ubiquitous battery technology. A pile of other problems—long charging times, limited life between charges, vulnerability to heat and cold, and the risks around the supply chain of critical metals—have led investors and governments on a billion-dollar quest for the next generation of batteries that can power clean vehicles, complement solar and wind, and keep grids of all sizes resilient.

For would-be innovators, says Venkat Viswanathan, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan, “the question is, which part of the battery should you tackle?” To improve the performance of lithium-ion batteries, Amprius replaces the typical graphite anode with a thinner silicon one, producing the ability to charge from zero to 80% in six minutes or to maintain a charge long enough to power an overnight stratospheric flight. Other companies are focused on lithiumsulfur batteries, which are lighter and more powerful, and avoid the need for carbon-intensive materials.

To tame the unruly combination of lithium and sulfur, Lyten creates a “scaffold” out of 3D graphene within its batteries, which could one day power everything from aircraft to satellites. In Massachusetts, 6K is rethinking how to make the stuff that goes into all these batteries. Using a beam of hot microwave plasma, the company can recycle metals into almost any lithium-ion battery material, offering a low-waste, low-cost way to onshore production.

In grid storage, some companies are finding advantages in systems that hardly look like batteries at all. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District’s new iron “flow battery,” designed by Oregon’s ESS, stores energy by circulating liquid electrolytes

in tanks that can scale up as needed. Such long-duration storage systems will be essential as utilities phase out carbon and make their grids more resilient. Vermont utility Green Mountain Power is reshaping the grid itself, with a little help from customers. Under a first-in-the-country plan, free or discounted home batteries will let customers store power and help the company redistribute it to users’ neighbors as needed, saving money and cutting carbon. “We’re moving faster,” says Viswanathan, who sees lots of juice in battery innovation and energy storage, which are top of mind for his students. “The feeling that they’re part of a climate solution—that really drives people.” —Alex Pasternack