What can AI do for food innovation? Meet LEO, Mattson’s AI Agent and find out! On this episode of The Plantbased Business Hour, Chief AI Officer at Mattson, Steve Gundrum, joins CEO of VegTech Invest, Elysabeth Alfano, to take LEO out for a spin and show us the future of food.
Specifically, they discuss:
- What is Mattson Co. and what do you focus on?
- Times are changing, and you now have LEO, the AI Agent, and advanced AI tools: what are they and what do they do specifically that couldn’t be done before?
- How has this changed your business and how will this change the future of food?
Below is a highlight clip and transcription from their long-form conversation, including their conversation with LEO and his ideas for new vegan frozen food items.
Elysabeth: I want to bring on today’s guest, Steve Gundrum, the Chief AI Officer at Mattson.
I have two things that I would like to ask LEO, and I don’t know if it’s a bit too forward-thinking. Hi LEO, this is Elysabeth. You’re live on the Plantbased Business Hour podcast. I have seen the plant-based section of the frozen foods portion of the grocery store grow significantly in the last year and I’m wondering if next year we will see more plant-based items in the frozen section and again more growth in this category.
LEO: Hi Elysabeth. Thanks for having me on the Plantbased Business Hour podcast. Yes, the plant-based section in the frozen foods aisle has seen significant growth recently and I anticipate this trend will continue into next year.
Several factors contribute to this continued growth. First, consumer demand for plant-based options is steadily increasing as more people adopt vegetarian, vegan, and flexitarian diets for health, environmental, and ethical reasons. Second, innovations in plant-based food technology are improving the taste and texture of products, making them more appealing to a broader audience.
Finally, retailers and brands are expanding their plant-based offerings to meet this demand, introducing a variety of new and exciting products. So yes, you can expect to see more plant-based items in the frozen section next year, further diversifying the options available to consumers and driving growth in this category.
Steve Gundrum: Hey, thanks LEO! We’ll talk to you later.
Elysabeth: Wow! So do we get to quote LEO as an authority? I think of all of the naysayers.
Steve Gundrum: No, we look at LEO as another seat at the table, someone who has an opinion based upon ready access to a tremendous amount of information. Again, whether it’s LEO or just interacting with our AI models, it’s all about the RL. It’s all about real intelligence. So your question was extremely well stated. LEO understood it very, very well and provided you with a really good answer. But you have to vet it out.
It has to make sure that it makes sense, just like if you sat around a conference room with ten people and they all spoke. You’re going to listen to different people and you’re going to take away certain little gems of knowledge that people said. We look at AI in exactly the same way. It’s another seat at the table. It just allows us to work in a faster, broader, and a more exciting way.
Elysabeth Alfano is the CEO of VegTech™ Invest, the advisor to the VegTech™ Plant-based Innovation & Climate ETF, EATV. She is also the founder of Plant Powered Consulting and the Host of the Plantbased Business Hour.
