Noses are overrated: In June, a perfume created by a computer system will be launched on the Brazilian market. The artificial intelligence involved combined ingredients in a manner unthinkable to most humans.
Image: IBM Research
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The artificial intelligence is called 'Philyra' - and its developers and users agree on one thing: It is female. "I spent a lot of time with her and see the programme as a 'she', that makes it easier," perfumer David Apel says jokingly.
But of course artificial intelligence has neither consciousness nor gender. It's just a computer system, a network of artificial neurons, created to store, process, and recombine large amounts of data. It can't smell or analyse fragrances in the air. Nevertheless, Philyra is the new employee at fragrance manufacturer Symrise in New York.
"I trained her and now she's training me," says Apel, who has worked as a perfumer for 39 years. Philyra's artificial intelligence was developed through cooperation between Symrise and IBM Research.
At Dia dos Namorados on June 12, Brazilian Valentine's Day, Philyra's first creation hits the market. The perfume is aimed at millennials, people born in the 1980s or 1990s.
David Apple is not afraid that Artificial Intelligence will one day make him unemployed. Image: IBM Research
The fragrance library
Putting together a perfume works much like cooking a dish. According to Apel, about 1300 basic substances, also known as scent building blocks, are available to a perfumer.
These are partly synthetic fragrances and partly extracts from flowers, fruits, mosses and spices. A perfumer combines several ingredients and adapts the formula until a new and pleasing fragrance emerges.
Philyra bases its knowledge on a database containing the composition of almost 1.7 million perfumes. She also knows in which country, age group and gender a fragrance has sold particularly well. "Between all these creations, she finds space - possibilities that no one has yet exhausted," Apel explains.
At the touch of a button, the computer system spits out new perfume formulas for a specific target group. A perfumer like Apel can then further refine these formulas.
Apel is not afraid that Philyra will take his job away. He sees it more as a collaboration between man and machine. "I get the chance to see perfume formulas that I would never have thought of myself," says Apel. Because knowledge and experience often pose as limits to creativity: "I tend to prefer certain ingredients and want to make a very specific kind of scent," he admits.
Philyra is more impartial in her approach. "It's universal," Achim Daub explains. He is a member of the Executive Board for Scent & Care at Symrise. "Dave, on the other hand, is an American, male, white, has lived in France, now lives in New York - and cultural preferences often get in the way."
More surprisingly, a sense of smell is not all that important in the perfume business, Daub says. "The perfumer who trained me then told me: 'I know what a perfume smells like when I know its composition'. That's exactly what Philyra does."
Stephen Hawking can attract attention to pretty much any scientific debate. The discussion of the safety of Artificial Intelligence is by now a dusty one, indeed. So why the sudden resurgence?
Image: "Cheetah Robot image courtesy of Boston Dynamics
More dangerous than the atomic bomb?
Silicon Valley icon Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, is famous for his warnings with regard to Artificial Intelligence. Last summer he declared that AI was the greatest conceivable threat to our existence. Stephen Hawking isn't new to the discussion, either, calling it famously the "worst mistake ever made."
Image: Reuters/L. Nicholson
Hysteria exaggerated?
Aren't AI robots more helpful than harmful like in the recent Hollywood film Chappie? A reprogramming gives the robot feelings and thoughts, and he helps humanity against an aggressive robotic police force.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Blomkamp
High-speed drone flop
Recent occurrences have shown, however, that not every instance of AI is without fault. All it took was nine minutes for the Falcon HTV-2 to sink in the ocean on a test flight in the summer of 2011. The US military drone was unmanned.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/DARPA
Not really all that new
Despite the resurgence, AI in military systems is a foregone conclusion. For over two decades, machines and robotic components have been advancing military systems. One prime example - the Eurofighter.
Image: Getty Images/S. Pond
Sci-Fi meets reality
The intelligent machines are getting more and more advanced - in many cases operational. The four-legged robot BigDog can haul cargo on offroad terrain, ice and snow. The robotics developer Boston Dynamics was bought by Google.
This week's letter has made clear that the entire AI community is seeking ethical guidelines, and even political regulation, to ensure that standards are set for how machines can be programmed. This is the only way to prevent abuse of Artificial Intelligence - and to put a stop to it getting out of control.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/DARPA
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Man vs. machine
"This would not be possible without machine learning," says Katharina Morik, a professor of artificial intelligence at the Technical University of Dortmund. Until a few years ago, computers were only as clever as the knowledge they were fed.
A person had to program them, set the rules for them and basically tell them what to do. With machine learning, especially deep learning, a computer system can now suddenly generate knowledge from experience itself, recognize laws in examples and turn these examples into more general rules.
Based on her database, Philyra uses machine learning to find out how the many ingredients in perfumes can be combined, says Joana Maria, a scientist at IBM Research involved in Philyra's development. "She has learned what works well with what, which substance can be replaced by which, and which combinations people in the U.S. or in Asia perceive better," she says.
The cosmetics company O Boticário commissioned Symrise to create three different versions of the perfume for Lover's Day: a version created entirely by AI, a second in which the perfumer made minor adjustments, and a third in which the AI's suggestion served only as a suggestion; a perfumer created his own formula based on it.
A jury at O Boticário chose the fragrance they liked best without knowing which version was which. "The overwhelming majority opted for the 100% AI generated perfume," says Achim Daub.
An artificial intelligence that suggests new combinations based on a database is not only helpful in the perfume business. The US spice manufacturer McCormick, for example, uses similar AI software to develop flavors.
McCormick's new product family called "One" for seasoning chicken, pork fillet and sausage is based on this work. "There are also automatic chemical laboratories that produce and evaluate new chemical compounds," says Morik.
Artificial intelligence is also in the process of completely transforming the material sciences. Whether they are experimenting with superconductors, semiconductors for solar cells or compounds for rechargeable batteries, instead of randomly searching for new materials and leaving the discovery of the correct mix to chance then measuring their properties in the laboratory, researchers can use machine learning methods to design entire libraries with possible candidate substances.
In practice, the system predicts the properties of the hypothetical compounds at the same time. From the thousands of proposals for new materials that AI spits out, scientists select those that are realistic and appropriate for the application.
For example, researchers at the University of Illinois, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and IBM Research use this concept to suggest new types of construction concrete that are more environmentally friendly than those currently in use. Their production, for example, produces fewer greenhouse gases or requires less water. However, these materials haven't arrived on the market yet. Here, the perfume industry was simply a step faster.
Ever creepier: 500 years of robots on show in London
The UK's Science Museum is opening its latest blockbuster exhibition, "Robots." Covering five centuries, the show features the most important collection of humanoids ever on display.
Image: Plastiques Photography, courtesy of the Science Museum
Animatronic baby
At the beginning of the "Robots" exhibition in London's Science Museum, visitors first encounter a realistic reproduction of a human baby. Just like any newborn, this robot's activity is limited to involuntary arm and leg movements; it appears to be breathing and can sneeze. Such babies are now often made for film sets; they're so life-like that some people feel strong emotions towards them.
Image: Plastiques Photography, courtesy of the Science Museum
Automaton monk
The exhibition covers humanity's 500-year-long quest to reproduce their features in mechanized forms. Although the term "robot" wasn't used until 1920, mechanical characters have been created for centuries. These automata would reenact Bible stories, for example. This monk, driven by a key-wound spring, comes from Spain and possibly dates as early as 1560.
Image: Smithsonian Institution/Jennie Hills
Cabinets of wonder
In the 16th century, extraordinary clockwork-driven automata would find a home in aristocrats' cabinets of curiosities, or "Wunderkammern." The "Marvel" section of the exhibition features among others the legendary Silver Swan from 1773. When wound up, the swan moves, preens itself and catches a fish. Novelist Mark Twain once described the swan as having "a living intelligence in its eyes."
Image: Plastiques Photography, courtesy of the Science Museum
Hand of steel
Long before humanoid-figures were created, prosthetic devices were developed to replace lost limbs. An early model was found on an Egyptian mummy dating back to between 950-710 BC. For steampunk fans, these steel and brass Victorian-era prosthetic arms shown at the "Robots" exhibition may seem beautiful; others might find them rather sinister.
Image: Plastiques Photography, courtesy of the Science Museum
Let's call them robots
In 1920, the Czech writer Karel Capek invented the word "robot" for his science fiction play "R.U.R.," which stands for "Rossum's Universal Robots." The term came from the Czech "robota," which means forced labor. The influential play was translated into 30 languages by 1923. In this picture, "Eric" (right) is a reproduction of one of the first robots in the world, originally from 1928.
Image: Plastiques Photography, courtesy of the Science Museum
Cinema's first robot was a woman
Fritz Lang's pioneering science-fiction work "Metropolis" (1927) featured one of the first robots of film history, the "Maschinenmensch" (machine-human). In this story set in 2026, the robot's creator aims to reproduce the woman he loved, Maria. A model of this iconic character is also on show at the exhibition.
Image: Plastiques Photography, courtesy of the Science Museum
'I'll be back'
Our perception of robots has been greatly influenced by art. Already in Capek's play, robots rise up to overthrow their creators. Since then, movies have also contributed to their threatening image. One of the most iconic robots in film history was created by James Cameron in his 1984 thriller, "The Terminator." The T800 Terminator from "Terminator Genisys" is also part of the exhibition.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. S. Gordon/2015 Paramount Pictures
The science behind the fiction
The London exhibition has also planned discussions and screenings of films focusing on artificial intelligence, such as Steven Spielberg's "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" (2001) and Alex Garland's "Ex Machina" (2015). The latter stars Alicia Vikander as an extremely advanced robot (picture). Increasingly becoming part of our reality, the themes of such movies are no longer surreal science fiction.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/A24 Films
Getting rid of repetition
Increasingly, robots are used to replace humans in industrial jobs. Why should people be obliged to do tasks characterized by the "four Ds" - dumb, dull, dirty or dangerous - when a robot can perform them? It only takes a few minutes for a regular worker to "teach" Baxter the robot a new task. It is sold for $25,000 (23,000 euros) - about the average annual salary of a manual laborer.
Image: Plastiques Photography, courtesy of the Science Museum
News shows are always the same, too
Sending out robots to clear dangerous landmines is clearly an advantage, but definitions of a "dull" job may vary. The Japanese Kodomoroid is a news-speaking android from 2014. She looks disturbingly human and can fluently report the news in a variety of languages, without stumbling. She is even programmed with a good sense of humor. Admittedly, she's a little stiff - for now.
Image: Plastiques Photography, courtesy of the Science Museum
Getting there soon
Rob Knight's open source android, ROSA, is the first "anthropomimetic" robot, which means that it reproduces the human body's structures. The robots shown at the exhibition at the Science Museum in London are not nearly as advanced as the androids of the TV series "Westworld," but they still provoke reflections on what it means to be human. The show runs from February 8 to September 3, 2017.
Image: Plastiques Photography, courtesy of the Science Museum
