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In between the many predictions of professional displacement and civilizational doom at the hands of artificial intelligence (A.I.) tools like ChatGPT, people are discovering some genuinely useful ways to incorporate them into the more mundane parts of life. They’re adept at improving emails, recommending new bands, and helping with homework.

Folks are putting ChatGPT to work in the kitchen, too, to great effect. In a recent Twitter thread, a Silicon Valley CEO described his “surprisingly delightful” ChatGPT-powered dinner party where the A.I. program suggested fusion themes and generated a menu, serving sizes, and cooking instructions. As someone who spends far too much time digging online for recipes, I decided to see whether ChatGPT could make me more efficient in the kitchen.

I started by asking for cuisine suggestions, which ChatGPT spat out with minimal prodding. After it gave me a laundry list of options, explaining why certain flavors and ingredients would pair well, I decided on a Moroccan-inspired menu consisting of an entree, a vegetable side, and a cocktail. Not every option was a winner, and plenty of the recipes I got during the discovery process featured errors only a robot would makefor instance, a Mediterranean-style chicken and chorizo stew that featured just one cup of broth, and an ostensibly Moroccan-themed mule that simply repeated the ingredients of a Moscow mule.

Still, it took some 15 minutes to receive dozens of recipe suggestions tailored to my cuisine and flavor preferences, with steps and ingredients fully spelled out such that I could pick the dishes best suited to my on-hand ingredients and available time. I settled on three promising options: Moroccan chicken skewers with spiced yogurt sauce, Moroccan-spiced roasted carrots, and a Marrakech mule.

Barring a few personal tweaksadding more paprika and introducing honey to the yogurt sauce, adding olive oil to the (otherwise dry) chicken marinade, baking the skewers instead of grilling themI was impressed with ChatGPT’s output. The mule, a combination of lime, orange, honey, and ginger, was a real treat. The chicken and carrots were a bit redundant, with ChatGPT proposing essentially the same seasonings for bothbut they were flavorful nonetheless. As an experiment in reducing my planning time while maintaining or improving recipe quality, I have no complaints.

Kitchen-helper A.I. has been in the works for a while now. In 2014, Bon Apptit ‘s test kitchen teamed up with IBM’s Chef Watson, a recipe-creating computer program, to invent new dishes. Working with an information bank of 10,000 Bon Apptit recipes, Watson could “understand and reproduce their underlying logic and style” to propose novel ones, many involving unique ingredient pairings that don’t go together intuitively, but instead work “on a fundamental chemical level.”

Promising, but it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Testing the program in 2016, The Guardian ‘s Leo Benedictus noted that “Chef Watson recommends an ingredient called ‘Mollusk’, which it helpfully explains is ‘the sixth full-length album by Ween.'” Watson’s performance in a cooking challenge against chef Yotam Ottolenghi yielded “a flavour rather close to the farmyard, but not uneatable.” (Of course, Ottolenghi and his team had the advantage of being able to “taste and discuss flavours, colours, temperatures, in a way that Watson can’t.”) Florian Pinel, Chef Watson’s lead engineer, told Benedictus that a feedback mechanism could be on its way in the future.

ChatGPT is highly adept in that way. When I told it that I don’t have a grill, it suggested I saute. When I rejected its seafood recipes, it switched to chicken options. When I mentioned that I didn’t have the mint or cilantro the spiced yogurt recipe called for, it suggested I substitute coriander or parsley to compensate for the missing flavor. (To the robot’s credit, both fit the Moroccan theme.)

Still, A.I.-generated recipes haven’t escaped criticism. Some of that centers on cultural appropriation concerns: A Food and Wine ChatGPT experiment prompted the author to worry that a Korean BBQ nacho recipe “did not accurately represent the complexity of Korean cuisine, and it felt like a superficial appropriation of cultural recipes” that lacked “contextual understanding of what truly constitutes Korean BBQ.” Tash McGill, president of Food Writers New Zealand, warned that these recipes “can easily stray into issues with cultural appropriation or untested techniques.” A 2014 Slate article fretted over the intellectual property implications of A.I. recipes, also wondering who might be held liable if an A.I.-driven commercial kitchen caused an allergic reaction.

Intellectual property issues will be ironed out in time, and A.I.-induced allergic reactions are unlikely to be problematic in private kitchens. As for cultural appropriation concerns, those misunderstand one of ChatGPT’s biggest advantages as a cooking tool: its ability to creatively incorporate snippets of a culture’s cuisine to varying degrees and in ways that consider the user’s culinary preferences and background. You can start with a format you lovesalads or soups, for exampleand ask ChatGPT to use it as a canvas for an unfamiliar cuisine. Or you can start with a cuisine you love and ask ChatGPT to marry it to a new one. From Mediterranean-Mexican to Japanese-Italian, the resulting recipes sound surprisingly delicious, even if they’d make culinary purists blush.

As a kitchen assistant, ChatGPT is most helpful when its efforts are combined with human onesvetting for errors, adjusting seasonings to taste, and making ingredient or equipment limitations known. A.I. won’t destroy cooking, but it has huge potential to make chefs more creative and efficient.

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Business

Greater risk to UK economy following Trump’s tariffs, says Bank of England

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Greater risk to UK economy following Trump's tariffs, says Bank of England

The future of the UK economy is weaker and more uncertain due to President Trump’s tariffs and conflict in the Middle East, the Bank of England has said.

“The outlook for UK growth over the coming year is a little weaker and more uncertain,” the central bank said in its biannual health check of the UK’s financial system.

Economic and financial risks have increased since the last report was published in November, as global unpredictability continued after the announcement of country-specific tariffs on 2 April, the Bank’s Financial Stability Report said.

Money blog: €1 home goes on sale – but there are T&Cs

These risks and uncertainty, as well as geopolitical tensions, like the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, are “particularly relevant” to UK financial stability as an open economy with a large financial sector, it said.

Pressures on government borrowing costs are “still elevated” amid significant doubts over the global economic outlook.

Had a 90-day pause on tariffs not been announced, conditions could have worsened, the report added.

More on Bank Of England

The chance of prices rising overall has also grown as tensions between Iran and Israel and the US threaten to push up energy prices.

Possible higher inflation in turn raises the prospect of more expensive borrowing from higher interest rates to bring down those price rises. This compounds the pressure on state borrowing costs.

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Trump’s tariffs: What you need to know

Mortgages

Borrowing costs for about 40% of mortgage holders are set to become costlier over the next three years as households refix to more expensive deals, affecting 3.6 million households, the Bank said.

Many homes have not refixed their mortgage since interest rates began to rise in 2021, meaning the full impact of higher rates has yet to filter through.

Those looking to get on the property ladder got a boost as the Bank said lenders could issue more loans deemed to be risky, meaning people could be able to borrow more.

Financial institutions can now have 15% of their new mortgages deemed risky every year, up from the current 9.7%.

Riskier mortgages are those with a loan value above 4.5 times the borrower’s income.

Be ‘prepared for shocks’

Despite the global and domestic economy concerns, the outlook for UK household and business resilience remained “strong”, the Bank said.

Investors, however, were warned that there could be “sharp falls in risky asset prices”, which include shares and currencies.

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If there are any vulnerabilities in non-bank lenders, it “could amplify such moves, potentially affecting the availability and cost of credit in the UK”.

“It is important that in their risk management, market participants [people involved in investing] are prepared for such shocks.”

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The steep market reaction following the tariff announcements in April “highlights that the interconnectedness of global financial markets can mean stress from one market can move quickly to others,” the report said.

Overall, though, “household and corporate borrowers remain resilient”, the Bank concluded.

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Politics

What is a wealth tax, how would it work in the UK and where else has one?

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What is a wealth tax, how would it work in the UK and where else has one?

The idea of a wealth tax has raised its head – yet again – as the government attempts to balance its books.

Downing Street refused to rule out a wealth tax after former Labour leader Lord Kinnock told Sky News he thinks the government should introduce one.

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Lord Kinnock calls for ‘wealth tax’

Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesman said: “The prime minister has repeatedly said those with the broadest shoulders should carry the largest burden.”

While there has never been a wealth tax in the UK, the notion was raised under Rishi Sunak after the COVID years – and rejected – and both Harold Wilson’s and James Callaghan’s Labour governments in the 1970s seriously considered implementing one.

Sky News looks at what a wealth tax is, how it could work in the UK, and which countries already have one.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer at the launch of the 10-year health plan in east London. Pic: PA
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Will Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer impose a wealth tax? Pic: PA

What is a wealth tax?

A wealth tax is aimed at reducing economic inequality to redistribute wealth and to raise revenue.

It is a direct levy on all, or most of, an individual’s, household’s or business’s total net wealth, rather than their income.

The tax typically includes the total market value of assets, including savings, investments, property and other forms of wealth – minus a person’s debts.

Unlike capital gains tax, which is paid when an asset is sold at a profit, a wealth tax is normally an annual charge based on the value of assets owned, even if they are not sold.

A one-off wealth tax, often used after major crises, could also be an option to raise a substantial amount of revenue in one go.

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Wealth tax would be a ‘mistake’

How could it work in the UK?

Advocates of a UK wealth tax, including Lord Kinnock, have proposed an annual 2% tax on wealth above £10m.

Wealth tax campaign group Tax Justice UK has calculated this would affect about 20,000 people – fewer than 0.04% of the population – and raise £24bn a year.

Because of how few people would pay it, Tax Justice says that would make it easy for HMRC to collect the tax.

The group proposes people self-declare asset values, backed up by a compliance team at HMRC who could have a register of assets.

Which countries have or have had a wealth tax?

In 1990, 12 OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries had a net wealth tax, but just four have one now: Colombia, Norway, Spain and Switzerland.

France and Italy levy wealth taxes on selected assets.

Colombia

Since 2023, residents in the South American country are subject to tax on their worldwide wealth, but can exclude the value of their household up to 509m pesos (£92,500).

The tax is progressive, ranging from a 0.5% rate to 1.5% for the most wealthy until next year, then 1% for the wealthiest from 2027.

Bogota in Colombia, which has a wealth tax
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Bogota in Colombia, which has a wealth tax

Norway

There is a 0.525% municipal wealth tax for individuals with net wealth exceeding 1.7m kroner (about £125,000) or 3.52m kroner (£256,000) for spouses.

Norway also has a state wealth tax of 0.475% based on assets exceeding a net capital tax basis of 1.7m kroner (£125,000) or 3.52m kroner (£256,000) for spouses, and 0.575% for net wealth in excess of 20.7m kroner (£1.5m).

Norway has both a municipal and state wealth tax. Pic: Reuters
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Norway has both a municipal and state wealth tax. Pic: Reuters

The maximum combined wealth tax rate is 1.1%.

The Norwegian Labour coalition government also increased dividend tax to 20% in 2023, and with the wealth tax, it prompted about 80 affluent business owners, with an estimated net worth of £40bn, to leave Norway.

Spain

Residents in Spain have to pay a progressive wealth tax on worldwide assets, with a €700,000 (£600,000) tax free allowance per person in most areas and homes up to €300,000 (£250,000) tax exempt.

Madrid in Spain. More than 12,000 multimillionaires have left the country since a wealth tax was increased in 2022. Pic: Reuters
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Madrid in Spain. More than 12,000 multimillionaires have left the country since a wealth tax was increased in 2022. Pic: Reuters

The progressive rate goes from 0.2% for taxable income for assets of €167,129 (£144,000) up to 3.5% for taxable income of €10.6m (£9.146m) and above.

It has been reported that more than 12,000 multimillionaires have left Spain since the government introduced the higher levy at the end of 2022.

Switzerland

All of the country’s cantons (districts) have a net wealth tax based on a person’s taxable net worth – different to total net worth.

Zurich is Switzerland's wealthiest city, and has its own wealth tax, as do other Swiss cantons. Pic: Reuters
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Zurich is Switzerland’s wealthiest city, and has its own wealth tax, as do other Swiss cantons. Pic: Reuters

It takes into account the balance of an individual’s worldwide gross assets, including bank account balances, bonds, shares, life insurances, cars, boats, properties, paintings, jewellery – minus debts.

Switzerland also works on a progressive rate, ranging from 0.3% to 0.5%, with a relatively low starting point at which people are taxed on their wealth, such as 50,000 CHF (£46,200) in several cantons.

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UK

Parents tell ‘untold stories’ of how their ‘hero’ daughters survived Southport attack

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Parents tell 'untold stories' of how their 'hero' daughters survived Southport attack

The parents of survivors of the Southport attack have revealed the “untold stories” of how their “hero” children escaped.

Axel Rudakubana, 18, murdered Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, Bebe King, six, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, in what the chairman of the public inquiry Sir Adrian Fulford called “one of the most egregious crimes in our country’s history”.

Eight children were injured along with two adults at a Taylor Swift-themed class in the Merseyside seaside town on 29 July last year, while 15 others escaped without physical injuries.

The surviving victims and their families have been granted anonymity during the inquiry, with one girl referred to as C3. Her father was the first to give evidence at Liverpool Town Hall on Wednesday.

Alice da Silva Aguiar, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Bebe King were murdered in an attack at a Taylor Swift-themed class.
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Alice da Silva Aguiar, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Bebe King were murdered in the attack

Reading a statement on behalf of him and his wife, he told how their daughter was the first girl to escape the scene by running from the Hart Space building and hiding behind a parked car before jumping through an open car door.

“Our nine-year-old daughter was stabbed three times in the back by a coward she didn’t even see,” he said.

“Although she didn’t know what was happening – she knew she had to run. She ran out of the studio door, down the stairs, and out of the building.”

Read more: Southport inquiry as it happened

He said she can be seen “looking scared, confused and pained” in CCTV footage of the incident, adding: “It was troubling for us to see what she had to go through, before either of her parents had arrived at the scene.”

“We are so thankful and proud that despite being critically injured, she was able to make the decisions she did in that terrible moment,” he said.

The girl’s father said his daughter “continues to astound” them with the way she dealt with the attack and her recovery, saying: “It has been inspiring for us to witness.”

Chair Sir Adrian Fulford sitting inside the hearing room at Liverpool Town Hall, ahead of the start of the inquiry.
Pic: PA
Pic: PA
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Inquiry chair Sir Adrian Fulford at Liverpool Town Hall. Pic: PA

He said she has difficulty sleeping, experiences flashbacks, looks over her shoulder scanning for potential danger when she leaves the house, has a fear of loud noises and has to turn off some songs when they come on the radio.

“Our daughter knows that she is loved,” he said.

“It is through this support and love that she will continue to thrive. We couldn’t be prouder of her. She is our hero.”

Stabbed 33 times

The parents of a girl referred to as C1 told how their “beautiful, articulate, fun-loving little girl” was stabbed 33 times.

After being attacked she escaped the building, but Rudakubana was seen dragging her back inside in CCTV footage played during his sentencing hearing, which drew gasps in court, before she was stabbed 20 more times.

“That is how she became known in this nightmare. The girl that was dragged back in,” her mother said.

Police at the scene of the Southport attack on 29 July 2024. Pic: PA
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Police at the scene. Pic: PA

Southport

She thanked the teachers who escaped to call police and flag down help but said: “The most painful of truths for us though, and what has been most devastating to come to terms with, is that there were no adults to help during both of her attacks.

“She was only supported by other children. The courage and strength she found leaves me crushed, but in complete awe.”

She added: “It is these untold stories of remarkable strength and bravery that are missing when we have heard other accounts of this day.”

The mother said the “hours and days that followed the attack were a living hell” and her daughter’s memories – including a concert of her “idol” Taylor Swift – have “been forfeited to make space for the trauma that she carries”.

“We tell her she was brave. How proud we are that she was able to help other girls. How her strength makes us feel strong. How important what she did that day was. She is her own hero. She may be a survivor of this attack, but she is still trying to survive this, every single day,” she said.

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‘We need to understand what went wrong’

Attack ‘changed everything’

The mother of a girl referred to as C8 said she was “like any other seven-year-old little girl”, “with an incredible energy” and “full of life”.

But in a statement read out by a legal representative, she said the attack last year “changed everything” when she got a “panicked phone call” from a friend’s mother, who couldn’t find the girls.

“That moment, the sound of fear in her voice and the panic I felt will never leave me,” she said.

“I rushed to the scene and what I saw is something no parent should ever see. My daughter had sustained serious physical injuries including a stab wound to her arm and a cut to her face and chin.”

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‘We don’t want Elsie forgotten’

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She said her daughter “remembers the attack vividly” and later told her “she thought it had to be fake, because she couldn’t believe something that terrible could really be happening”.

“Where she was once eager to go off with her friends, she now needs my support if it is somewhere public or unknown,” she said.

“Simple days out now need a level of safety planning that we would never have considered before.”

‘Constant flashbacks’

The mother of a girl referred to as Q, who escaped without being physically injured, told how she arrived to collect her daughter to find “children running from the building, screaming and fearing for their lives”.

In a statement read to the inquiry by a legal representative on her behalf, she said it was “the most horrific experience of my life”.

“What I saw on that day will stick with me forever, I constantly have flashbacks and relive what happened,” she said.

She said her daughter has become “very withdrawn” since the attack and has asked her parents, “How will I ever be normal again?”

Rudakubana was jailed for a minimum of 52 years in January and is being investigated over an alleged attack on a prison officer at Belmarsh prison in May.

The public inquiry, announced by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper in January, is looking into whether the attack could or should have been prevented, given what was known about the killer.

Rudakubana, who was born in Cardiff, had contact with police, the courts, the youth justice system, social services and mental health services, and was referred to the government’s anti-extremism Prevent scheme three times before the murders.

A rapid review into his contact with Prevent found his case should have been kept open and that he should have been referred to Channel, another anti-terror scheme.

C1’s mother said: “She deserves the truth, she deserves accountability. She deserves an apology. Our girls deserve an apology.

“Backed up by the promise that changes will be made and this will not be allowed to happen again.”

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