In the past three years artificial intelligence has changed the world. For many of us, the reality of AI seemed to happen overnight, but believe it or not, artificial intelligence traces its roots back to Alan Turing in the years after World War II.
Turing had been essential to the Allies cracking of Enigma, the code the German’s used on their messages. After the war, he turned his attention to the then-idea of artificial intelligence and began asking the question, “Can machines think?”
To answer that question, he proposed a test for computers, which has come to be known as the Turing test to judge whether computers are consistently providing answers indistinguishable from those a human would provide.
While we still have a way to go before artificial intelligence passes the Turing test, its adoption has skyrocketed in both business and personal use. Organizational usage of AI in just one year jumped from 55% in 2023 to 78% in 2024, according to Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.
The baking industry is no different in terms of experimenting with the potential of AI. According to a 2024 survey from the American Bakers Association, 70% of businesses had planned to include some form of AI in their business within the next 12 months.
While AI opens up a new horizon in the baking industry, the question becomes, what are the best ways to incorporate artificial intelligence into the baking world? And how can you be ready for new advancements?
Get ready
When I talk to experts in this area, I see a future where AI impacts every aspect of baking. And I know that what I can currently imagine doesn’t even scratch the surface of what we could do with the technology in the future.
Currently, most people are focused on incorporating the large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT or Claude into their workflows and equipment. While LLMs offer many benefits in speeding up repetitive tasks and analyzing data, I believe the true advancements for AI in the future will come with agentic AI.
An agent for everything
After talking with some experts, and of course, asking ChatGPT for some background, I delved into the concept of agentic AI. Where LLMs can simply provide an output—text, an image, a video—agentic AI can actually do things for you.
Agentic AI is a broad term for autonomous agents that can pursue goals, plan multi-step strategies, make decisions, and take action. For example, personally, my agent could know my travel schedule, know where I am, see that a meeting in Chicago is running over, know traffic and weather, predict my travel time, look for flights on my preferred airline, text me that I need to change my flight, book the flight, and choose my preferred seat.
For the baking industry it could look like this: For larger bakers in logistics, it would know the weather and predict demand, look at inventory and staffing, and suggest to a plant manager a plant for production. If it got the OK, it could source the ingredients, make the necessary staffing decisions, and alert everyone involved.
Agentic AI opens up a whole new host of possibilities to create efficiencies in the way we do business. In fact, a report from Gartner predicts that 15% of daily work decisions will be made by agentic AI by 2028.
Look ahead
Knowing that the agentic AI wave is coming gives us time to prepare now. It’s time to start evaluating our businesses and deciding where AI can help in the future and how we can better use human knowledge and creativity in other ways.
A good place to start for the baking industry might areas like quality control, predictive maintenance, and waste reduction. The data that the end users have been wanting from machines for some time now, can be used in better and more efficient ways than ever before. If the data is good, an agent can tell us all about it. The same goes for logistics, production inventory, maintenance, all aspects of HR, and even brand and consumer insights.
Think beyond equipment insights, though. Agentic AI can alert bakers of weather problems and road conditions and suggest when trucks should be on the road to offset the possible delays, ensuring deliveries are on time.
As we enter the future of AI, start asking yourself where you need help, where you are understaffed, and where the most manual transfer or analysis of data is, then think about how an AI agent might be able to help you. Even if you aren’t ready to dive into the world of agentic AI just yet, being prepared for the future is never a bad idea.
Whether AI ever passes the Turing test, agentic AI is here, and figuring out just how to use it in the baking world can put your business and our industry on the forefront of the future.
