When will I be replaced by machines, computers & AI?

The way flavour houses operate is changing because of advancements in technology, A.I. & how they are incorporating it into every facet of their operations.

Even though the pace of development in the general advancement (miniaturization) of microchips has slowed down in recent years (refer to Moore's law), advances in technology (such as AI), continue to gain momentum. Recently, a team of UCLA electrical and computer engineers created a physical artificial neural network -- a device modeled on how the human brain works, created using a 3D printer -- that can analyze large volumes of data and identify objects at the actual speed of light. Technology has already taken over 90% of the jobs humans used to do. Humans are constantly being replaced by robots & machines, powered by computers & controlled by a minimal amount of individuals.

In a recent article published in perfumer & flavorist, advances in technology and the future of the innovation of perfumes was discussed. Similarly to the flavour industry, new technologies, data, evolving consumer demands & more in-depth quality assurance

"Technological advances have changed all aspects of modern life, including not only the expectations of consumers and how we meet them, but the very way that we perform our jobs each day. The question is, where will technology take us next?" Perfumer & Flavorist

requirements. are transforming how perfume companies operate. Those who can adapt, will manage to remain relevant & profitable. "Over the last few years, robots and computers

have made remendous leaps in their performance and capabilities and have replaced more human jobs." The question is, how long is this going to continue & how far will it go?

Anyone familiar with star trek remembers the replicator (see below), a machine capable of creating objects, meals & liquids out of pure energy. Star Trek has accurately predicted

many technologies in the past, but this is far from happening anytime soon. However, it reprents the direction that we are headed in. The way flavour houses operate, is changing, catalyzed by advancements in technology & A.I. How will all this be incorporated into different flavour house departments?

Current changes in the flavour industry

Perfume-dosing robot that boost productivity & compounding robots that "try to act like humans" already exist. Pharmaceutical companies have already developed robots capable of precisely making intricate mixtures (see below), such as personalized chemotherapy cocktails. Computational chemistry is also a tool that fragrance companies utilize to theoretically create, evaluate & eventually sythesise new compounds having customized molecular structures & corresponding properties. These technologies are sure to

become adapted & more common in flavour houses, since there are many non-creative or repetitive tasks that are performed by humans. This would reduce error & resources, increase precision & ultimately enable humans to focus on problem-solving & creative tasks. Automated dosing machines are currently being utilized to manufacture perfumes &

flavours at industrial levels. As shown above, they can easily replace whole production crews. Similarly, warehousing & logistics personnel can be replaced by an array of robots, guided by A.I., so that raw materials & finished goods can be efficiently controlled & utilized. The use of A.I. & robotics has become a new reality with online giants such as Amazon & Alibaba (see below). These technologies could easily be applied to the perfume & flavour houses.

About twenty years ago, the rise of globalization, regulations & unstable supplies of raw materials initially forced the multinational P&F houses to internally develop sophisticated softwares to maintain steady supplies at optimal costs. Over the last few years, most

procurement departments all of the world utilize even more advanced integrated softwares (made much cheaper) that can even automatically place purchase orders. Having full access to market trends, being able to source from anywhere in the world, making sense of internal historical purchasing/sales data & most importantly linking all this together is powerful. There is hardly any human involvement & it can prevent purchasers from becoming corrupted by suppliers.

Quality control of the raw materials & finished goods produced from them can be currently performed by an array of automated analytical tools, with minimal human involvement & at a reasonable price. At Novotaste, we have an automated system that acquires & stores relevant data into databases. This is used to approve or reject ingredients & products as well as automatically generating a variety of quality assurance & regulatory documents such as SDS's, nutritional information & a variety of others. A significant portion of the documents we publish is created by software. Without our reliance on customized software, we would need to simply hire more employees to solely generate a variety of documents. The reality is that humans would be bored with these tasks & this would probably lead to more errors & inconsistencies. By exploiting & trusting technology, we require less employees, have more consistent/precise data & can use the human element for more important & complex tasks.

Sales & marketing

The building of trust & relationships with clients is a key factor in developing flavour sales. The human element is significant, but it increasingly requires to be supplemented with innovative, competitive & compatible products & services that meet the high-paced demands of food & beverage manufacturers. Taking out clients to fancy suppers, golf tournaments & special events is not as effective as it once was. The old school way of doing things is transforming proportionally to the influx of youth in R&D departments & changing customer demands. Product developers want P&F houses to solve their QA, purchasing, marketing & other specific requirements as a prerequisite to building relationships & eventually testing the customized winning flavour systems that are formulated for them.

While the usually preferred flavour profiles dominate flavour demands for new products, unique flavour profiles & processes is what gets flavourists the attention. Every flavour house can make an assortment of classically popular flavours. At Novotaste, we try to stimulate & inform our clientele by offering constantly updated segmented market flavour, food & beverage trends. By reviewing our website, clients can gain perspectives on what is currently hot & trendy. Our newsletters showcase important trends & new products, while our social media specifically target R&D staff with novel formulations. One of the advantages of interacting with a flavour house, is that it is our responsibility to be in-tune with market trends & customer demands. We also directly work on thousands of new product launches every year, so we have a direct pulse of what consumers are purchasing. Informed & inspired customers have a higher probability of subsequently asking for a flavour sample for their applications.

To remain relevant, it is important to increasingly rely on consumer insights, neuroscience (such as neuromarketing), online platforms & A.I. to sort through it all in an intelligent & timely manor. An increasing amount of firms offer very detailed market overviews of popular flavours. Global data is one such company I have dealt with. The shear amount of market insights that are available is overwhelming, but it is a very powerful tool when used properly. A.I. firms offering customized tools to solve specific business problems (such as IBM) are mushrooming & increasingly being used to solve a range business problems at reasonable costs. Analytics specialist Black Swan, offers a real-time view of the culinary and refreshment options that are generating buzz and burgeoning in popularity among consumers. PepsiCo has partnered with them & is able to keep up with the activity of numerous other enterprises...tracking over 2,200 brands and products...when taken together, the information collected by his team can provide useful insights that cover areas like innovation, strategy and even retail partnerships.

R&D: Globalization, advancements in technology & novel demands

Similar to the production of flavour systems, various mundane R&D tasks can easily be taken care by automated machines. However, P&F laboratories require more sophistication, range & sensitivity to perform their tasks. The best example of this is the typical GCMS that is used to identify qualitative & quantitative aspects of chemicals found in food, beverages, flavours & perfumes. These machines are extremely sensitive, but still require the human element to confirm results. They are mostly used for analytical purposes, while humans conduct most sensory tests. Humans, are currently still more sensitive & complex than algorithms & machines!

There is still a disconnect between human & machine perception. We also still do not fully understand the biological mechanisms responsible for taste, olfaction, pheromones & even synaesthesia. Lexical-gustatory synaesthesia is a rare phenomenon in which the individual experiences flavour sensations when they read, hear, or imagine words. Why do we have olfactory receptors in various internal organs & what are their functions?

We are also only starting to pay serious attention to the multisensory effects on taste & smell (discussed in more detail later). The simple facts are that sound, visuals, textures, memories & emotions can all have affects on sensory perception of smells & tastes. Of course, a bad tasting or smelling product can also affect the perception of sound, visuals & textures, as well as triggering emotions & creating memories. Why don't all flavour houses pay more attention to this, since it is so relevant to their product offering? Novotaste's customized multisensory analysis laboratory addresses this & it is another way in which it stands apart from its competition. It is used for internal & external multisensory experiments, guaranteeing that we stay at the forefront of innovation & consumer demands.

What does this all mean & how can we use it to our advantage? The subjectivity of taste & smell is also hard to understand & digitally mimic. Nevertheless, once all of this is fully understood, I'm sure that technology will significantly replace humans within a relatively short time-frame.

There are new advancements in the development of a biomimetic nose & electronic tongue (see below) that will be more sensitive, versatile & consistent than humans. These will

surely be combined with refined sensory techniques involving GCMS & some human elements. I envision we will eventually use fully automated smell & taste robots armed with A.I. The sensitivities & logic of these machines could be adjusted, based on demographic, culture, sex etc...

The use of incubators & accelerators , increasing amounts of data combined with globalization & evolving consumer demands is forcing R&D departments to rely on technology to be able to react & deliver winning solutions for their respective clients. Twenty years ago, some small & medium-scale flavour houses could get away with simply using excel to create formulas. In 2018, this would simply lead to bankruptcy. There are too many requirements, flavour requests are becoming very complex & their is simply too much data to process. R&D staff should ideally be focused on research, rather than having their thoughts & time become diluted by data, quality assurance matters etc... Thus, automation, increased reliance on technology & A.I. are key trends that need to become adopted as fast as possible for R&D departments of flavour houses to remain relevant & productive.

Watson, is a question answering (QA) computing system that IBM built to apply advanced natural language processing, information retrieval, knowledge representation, automated reasoning, and machine learning technologies to the field of open domain question answering. Powered by the latest innovations in machine learning, Watson lets you learn more with less data. You can integrate AI into your most important business processes, Chef Watson, for example, read up on the chemical composition of hundreds of

different ingredients and analyzed some 10,000 recipes from Bon Appétit. By combining that data and detecting certain patterns, Chef Watson has learned to suggest up to four different ingredients that blend together seamlessly. Firmenich’s digital strategy (D-Lab) is dedicated to harnessing Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), to augment the Group’s innovation across fragrance and taste creation. This expands Firmenich’s footprint to their EPFL Innovation Park & the digital hub brings together Firmenich creators and experts with key members of the Campus’s dynamic ecosystem.

I have provided a few relevant articles (below) that give a snapshot of what is currently being done & available:

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The future...

My Father, the late John D. Haffenden worked for various multinational perfume & flavour houses over the years & also started two of his own, which were eventually sold to Bell F&F as well as FONA. His perspectives on how the industry had changed over the last 50 years were very telling. He experienced a steady amount of changes, improvements, new technologies & ingredients until the end of the 20th century. Since then, he saw an exponential acceleration of transformations, regulations, new technologies & available sales & marketing tools that seems to be changing relative to general the generation of data, advancements in technology & A.I. His first company-issued computer in the 1990's was a prelude to what was coming. He embraced technology, but could not keep pace with the rate of changes taking over the flavour industry.

“Anything that could give rise to smarter-than-human intelligence—in the form of Artificial Intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, or neuroscience-based human intelligence enhancement - wins hands down beyond contest as doing the most to change the world. Nothing else is even in the same league.” —Eliezer Yudkowsky

I personally don't see any reason why the pace of change will not continue. There is so much happening & so much more to come. I'm basically a by-product of having been born & raised in the flavour industry. My Father's work & companies influenced who I am & what I decided to focus on as a career. When I was younger, he never doubted that he was guiding me in the wrong direction. The future seemed bright & the skill-set that I had (& was refining), clearly increased my chances for a great career. This does not represent how I feel regarding the future of my children.

“Some people call this artificial intelligence, but the reality is this technology will enhance us. So instead of artificial intelligence, I think we'll augment our intelligence.” —Ginni Rometty

How much will the flavour industry change over the next 20 years? Its hard to tell, but if current advancements in technology & reliance in A.I. continue, my current skill-set will not be as valuable as when I started my professional career. I happily & routinely expose my children to what I do as a profession, because it is such a unique, creative, relevant, fun & multisensory experience. However, I will make sure that they are also well versed in computer languages/code & technology too. This will help them to possibly carve-out a job in the P&F industry & most importantly, most other industries.

“It's going to be interesting to see how society deals with artificial intelligence, but it will definitely be cool.” —Colin Angle

I remember a few conversations I had with individuals at the end of the 20th century. They would speculate that in the future, humans would simply eat little pills containing essentials, such as proteins, carbohydrates, fat, fiber & micro nutrients. This tiny, white vision of the future had its roots in late 19th Century feminism, in the lead up to the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. Customized for every need, these pills were hypothesized to be able to sustain life for people on the go. If one were to believe this, they would need to forget about the human condition. Eating is a dynamic multisensorial experience that brings people together, can trigger emotions, build memories & sometimes result in euphoria. Eating, via a pill might have seemed inevitable & futuristic, but currently does not compute. Just because it makes sense on paper, it does not mean that it will work or make sense later. So, lets see how far digitization & reliance on technology will transform the flavour industry. We all know that it will be responsible for great things, but how will it impact humanity in the process?

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A Multisensory future!

The use & integration of smell & taste sensory cues in a variety of products, services & techniques is currently very trendy & relevant to how the flavour industry is changing. We are experiencing the dawn of a multisensory revolution mainly due to advances in technology & increased scientific understanding of the senses, combined with artistic ingenuity. This is paving the way for an explosion of new multisensory applications services & technologies serving various purposes. A tidal wave of change & improvements are already available for home, businesses, art galleries, health care facilities & entertainment venues. Some great examples of this are various applications & services that are increasingly using augmented & virtual reality technologies. Flavours & scents are being used with technology to make the experience more real & result in more powerful emotions that cannot be created otherwise. Ever watch a movie in a theater or play a video game where scents are specifically emitted to represent what is being seen & heard? This simply brings the overall experience to a whole other level of complexity, engagement & realism. View my site (msensory.com), it serves as a multisensory platform for various related topics & projects.

Scent & taste are being utilized in a variety of novel ways:

Marketing | Traditional marketing targets specific audience via sight & sound alone. Scent, texture & haptic communication are currently being used at a higher frequency & will eventually become mainstream. More details

Branding | Companies & products are adding scent & taste to represent their brand. More details

Learning |  Healthy, mentally challenged & disable individuals can benefit from multisensory learning techniques. More details

Health | Individuals with dementia & schizophrenia, children with disabilities. More details

Communication | We can now communicate by scent via smartphone. Tires that emit a specific smell when they need to be changed?…it exists. More details

Entertainment | Movie theaters, production/event companies, concerts & the gaming industry are using more visuals then ever & spicing it up with customized scents. More details

Art | Interactive exhibits & art-forms take the experience to another level. More details

Scientific | Advances in our scientific understanding of multisensory topics & corresponding applications generated from this are primarily responsible for novel applications. More details

A deeper understanding, evolution & integration of multisensory elements, coupled with new scent delivery technologies is already benefiting fragrance companies. Most well-established marketing firms currently have scent marketing departments & scents (as well as flavours) are being utilized in a range of novel ways. Advancements in technology, information sharing & changing consumer demands has also led to a food & beverage revolution. In turn, flavour houses are stepping up with flavour solutions that enable their products to have healthier nutritionals, sexy ingredient labels & marketing pitches, while tasting great. Flavour profiles of products are being used as powerful sales & marketing tools, such as in scratch & sniff labels, as well as interactive advertisement displays.

The simple facts are that humans are multisensory beings that communicate in multisensory ways. If you want to increase the chances of triggering positive emotions & creating specific memories, typical audio-visual approaches can simply become more effective when other senses are involved. Using flavours & fragrances in marketing, entertainment, branding, educational & health-related ways is going to become more common. Ironically, technology requires the use of scents & flavours to become more realistic & engaging!

Conclusion

Regardless of what people think, technology, machines & A.I. are contributing to improvements in the way flavour houses are operated & how they interact with customers. Humanity is simply living through a computer revolution, similar to the industrial revolution. Jobs of all sorts will be lost, while others will be created. The way we do things will change & novel methodologies will be invented. However, the human element is irreplaceable & unique. I have faith that doomsday scenarios, similar to the ones portrayed in the Terminator & The Matrix franchises will not happen...anytime soon. It might however be a good idea to add multisensory elements to future releases to produce more disturbing emotions & sharp memories. By adding customized haptics/temperatures, smells & tastes it would make them more realistic & scary models of what could happen if we do not properly control advances in technology & A.I.

We cannot blithely assume that a superintelligence will necessarily share any of the final values stereotypically associated with wisdom and intellectual development in humans — scientific curiosity, benevolent concern for others, spiritual enlightenment and contemplation, renunciation of material acquisitiveness, a taste for refined culture or for the simple pleasures in life, humility and selflessness, and so forth. —  Philosopher Nick Bostrom wrote in a paper titled "The Superintelligent Will: Motivation and Instrumental Rationality in Advanced Artificial Agents"

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