Technology already has been an extension of our eyes and our ear. Most of the people I know grew up with it and don’t think about it. So why is it that learning that technology can smell now makes me feel weird and even a little bit scared? I think because it involves AI. AI is getting smarter and more developed by the day which means we are getting closer and closer to AI taking over most of our devices. I feel like I am not given the time to get used to it since AI develops so fast but that is not the point of this blog.
Smelling is connected to a lot of different aspects of life like; eating, memories, a deterrent, etc. Us humans also like to smell nice with deodorant and perfume. Most people connect different memories to different specific smells, like the miss dior perfume makes me immediately think of my grandma since that is what she always wore.
So what if technology could actually smell the smell after the rain, the smell of books or the smell of fresh cut peaches. Well we have reached the technical development that we can. Obviously technology isn’t able to smell like we do but scientists have begun digitizing scents like we have done for images and sounds. These developments already happened way back in 1877 for sounds and 1878 for images. So it has taken a while for us to start digitizing smells.
If you think about it, we humans already have difficulty describing smells. We all get taught that grass is green and that the sky is blue but the smells we just have to know and recognize. If someone says something smells like grass you have to smell and think back to grass to see if it smells the same. No one has measured smell like we have images and sounds. Images and sounds consist of wavelengths and amplitudes that clearly reflect frequency and colour. Smell consist of a chemical structure that has no visible connections to the way humans experience smells. Before we had AI, we probably could have never make technology smell or at least it would have taken another ten years or so. AI needs to be fed the data on the smells so it can accurately recreate them and predict them. This data is partly subjective since we still don’t quite know all the chemical compounds of smells and how different people experience the chemical compounds as smell.
All in all, we are not quite there yet, but it is all very exciting that we are digitizing another one of our senses. At the same time for me, this development signifies how smart AI is getting, which slightly terrifies me. I also see that this development is really significant for us just like digitizing sight and sound was. The last time we digitized a sense was a generation ago so this is really significant and I am interested to see how it further develops also into daily life experience smell.
Sources
Miles, Ned Carter. “‘Giving computers a sense of smell’: the quest to scientifically map odours.” The Guardian, n.d. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/oct/28/giving-computers-a-sense-of-smell-the-quest-to-scientifically-map-odours.
Wong, Matteo. “AI Is Working on Understanding Odors Now.” The Atlantic, October 20, 2023. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/10/ai-scent-digitizing-smell/675608/.
Wired. “Machines Can Not Only ‘see’ but Also ‘smell’ Now | WIRED Middle East.” WIRED Middle East, September 28, 2023. https://wired.me/technology/machines-can-smell-odor-map/.
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