The Human Touch: Exploring the Synergy Between Bartenders and AI in Cocktail Creation

Abstract

As artificial intelligence systems become more advanced and ubiquitous across industries, questions arise regarding the continued role of human expertise and creativity, especially in services fields dependent on personal client interactions. This paper explores these issues through an experiment comparing cocktails crafted by a human bartender versus an AI system using identical patron flavor and style inputs. 27 patrons at a (B-X) cocktail lounge participated, first filling out a survey on their flavor preferences like sweetness, citrus levels, ingredients, and sensory experiences like "refreshing" or "adventurous." The bartender and AI system used these profiles to each create a unique cocktail recipe for each patron. In a blind taste test, patrons sampled both their bartender and AI cocktail, then guessed which was human made. Results showed 22 out of 27 patrons correctly chose the bartender's cocktail, suggesting significant remaining advantages to human creativity, intuition, and personalization ability versus current AI limits. However, 5 patrons preferred the AI cocktail, confirming the creative potential. Qualitative interviews found most patrons emphasizing the bartender's ability to create "surprising" ingredient combinations aligned to their tastes through personal interactions. The AI was seen as more "rigid," even when the cocktail tasted good. As one patron described, "the bartender just got my vibe immediately and ran with it." The paper argues this aligns with research on emotional intelligence in services roles. However, the paper also explores opportunities for beneficial synergies between human bartenders augmented by AI tools. AI could handle tedious tasks like inventory management, quantified recommendations, and even creative suggestions to spark human imagination. Such collaboration would retain the human touch most valued in bartending, while benefiting from AI's scalability and computational insights, realizing augmented creativity. More bartending experiments are needed, as are expanded service contexts, but initial results suggest maintaining the human role even amidst advancing AI. The creative, emotional, personalized "human touch" retains importance across industries. This study begins quantifying that value.