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takyon writes:

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/artificial-intelligence-grows-nose

22 teams of computer scientists have unveiled a set of algorithms able to predict the odor of different molecules based on their chemical structure. It remains to be seen how broadly useful such programs will be, but one hope is that such algorithms may help fragrancemakers and food producers design new odorants with precisely tailored scents.

This latest smell prediction effort began with a recent study by olfactory researcher Leslie Vosshall and colleagues at The Rockefeller University in New York City, in which 49 volunteers rated the smell of 476 vials of pure odorants. For each one, the volunteers labeled the smell with one of 19 descriptors, including "fish," "garlic," "sweet," or "burnt." They also rated each odor's pleasantness and intensity, creating a massive database of more than 1 million data points for all the odorant molecules in their study.

[...] The upshot is that even though the current study showed computers can predict which of 19 words people will use to describe this set of odors, it's not clear whether the same artificial intelligence programs would rise to the challenge if there were more categories.

Predicting human olfactory perception from chemical features of odor molecules (DOI: 10.1126/science.aal2014) (DX)

Original Submission