Philip Maughan in Noem:
Over the last few years, breakthroughs in AI have been almost too numerous to track. Chatbots can now pass the same exams required of doctors and lawyers. A cancer drug designed by AI has entered clinical trials. AI agents are serving as autonomous personal assistants. There have even been reports that AI can smell. “Computers Are Learning to Smell,” declared The Atlantic. “AI is digitizing our sense of smell,” according to the World Economic Forum. “AI tastebuds are better at identifying what’s in food than you,” claimed TechRadar, while a spellbound BBC Future reported that “An AI started ‘tasting’ colours and shapes.”
The truth, however, is that these headlines grossly embellish AI’s abilities. If you read the BBC Future article closely, for example, you’ll learn that a large language model (LLM) repeated the associations humans make between tastes, colors and shapes — sweet things are pink and round; sour things are yellow — observations that were captured in its training data. The reality is that very little progress has been made toward giving AI a sense of smell because pretty much nobody working in AI cares.
More here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.