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Today, with the continuous development of technology, artificial intelligence (AI) has made another surprising advancement: it can "taste" different flavors! Recently, Italian scientists have developed an artificial taste system called GO-ISMD. This system not only accurately detects basic tastes such as sour, sweet, bitter, and salty with an accuracy rate of up to 90%, but it can also distinguish between cola and coffee in one taste.
This research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and has attracted widespread attention. Scientists used graphene oxide, a material, to build a sensor that simulates human taste reactions. Graphene, as an excellent chemical sensor, was chosen as the basis for developing this "electronic tongue" due to its extremely high electrical conductivity and sensitivity to various molecules.
Image source note: The image is AI-generated, and the image licensing service is Midjourney.
In detail, this new taste sensor utilizes the unique properties of graphene oxide. When it comes into contact with different chemical substances, the electrical conductivity of the material changes. These changes are interpreted by machine learning, allowing the system to identify different tastes and form a "memory" of taste. This process mimics how human taste receptors convert different chemical substances into nerve signals, which are then processed by the brain.
To verify the effectiveness of this system, the research team selected four representative chemical substances, each representing a different taste: sour (acetic acid), bitter (magnesium sulfate), salty (sodium chloride), and sweet (lead acetate). By decomposing and classifying the problems, the system successfully classified the samples, and when identifying previously uncontacted chemical substances, the accuracy reached as high as 90%. Additionally, the system performed well in classifying complex beverages such as coffee and cola, achieving an accuracy of 92.3%.
This research not only represents an important technical advancement, but it also has the potential to help people who have lost their sense of taste due to neurological diseases to regain this essential perception. As scientist Andrea Lavazza said, this discovery is "a very, very important step," and we look forward to the application of artificial taste systems in more fields in the future.
