Niépce-Bell or Turing: how to test odour reproduction

Abstract

Decades before the existence of anything resembling an artificial intelligence system, Alan Turing raised the question of how to test whether machines can think, or, in modern terminology, whether a computer claimed to exhibit intelligence indeed does so. This paper raises the analogous issue for olfaction: how to test the validity of a system claimed to reproduce arbitrary odours artificially, in a way recognizable to humans. Although odour reproduction systems are still far from being viable, the question of how to test candidates thereof is claimed to be interesting and non-trivial, and a novel method is proposed. Despite the similarity between the two questions and their surfacing long before the tested systems exist, the present question cannot be answered adequately by a Turing-like method. Instead, our test is very different: it is conditional, requiring from the artificial no more than is required from the original, and it employs a novel method of immersion that takes advantage of the availability of easily recognizable reproduction methods for sight and sound, a la Nicéphore Niépce and Alexander Graham Bell.

Keywords: Turing test; odour reproduction; olfaction.

Figure 1.

‘View from the Window at Le Gras’, by Nicéphore Niépce (1826–1827).

Figure 2.

‘Boulevard du Temple’, by Louis Daguerre (1838).

Figure 3.

Alexander Graham Bell making the first transatlantic phone call, ca 1892. (Credit: Heritage Image Partnership Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo.)

Figure 4.

An odour reproduction system.