Google researchers have revealed they are taught an artificial intelligence (AI) machine how to smell, bring the cyber-sense up to the standards of sight and hearing. Google’s Brain Team described how they used machine-learning to train a robot to accurately categories different smells by assessing their molecular structure. The robot was instructed via a database containing 5,000 molecules analyzed and identified by perfume makers with descriptions such as “earthy” and “pungent”.
Researchers inputted two-thirds of the database into the machine’s neural network. Then the AI bot passed after analyzing the remaining scents. Researchers have long attempted to program a sense of smell using artificial intelligence, but significant issues have proved problematic. Difficulties included the subjectivity involved in describing smells.
Based on analogous advances in deep learning for sight and sound, it should be possible to directly predict the end sensory result of an input molecule, even without knowing the intricate details of all the systems involved. Solving the odor prediction problem would aid in discovering new synthetic odorants, thereby reducing the ecological impact of harvesting natural products.
According to Michael Dukakis Institute for Leadership and Innovation (MDI), AI technology and application can be a force for helping people achieve well-being and happiness and relieving them of resource constraints and arbitrary/inflexible rules and processes.
The original article can be found here.