• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Skip to navigation
Close Ad

The Spoon

DAILY NEWS & ANALYSIS ABOUT THE FOOD TECH REVOLUTION

  • Home
  • News
    • Alternative Protein
    • Business of Food
    • Connected Kitchen
    • Delivery & Commerce
    • Foodtech
    • Food Waste
    • Future of Drink
    • Future Food
    • Future of Grocery
    • Startups
    • Restaurant Tech
    • Robotics, AI & Data
  • Food Tech Jobs
  • Podcasts
  • Events
  • Connect
    • Advertise On The Spoon
    • Send us a Tip
    • Spoon Newsletters
    • The Spoon Foodtech Slack
    • RSS
  • About
    • Staff
The Spoon
  • Home
  • News
    • Alternative Protein
    • Business of Food
    • Connected Kitchen
    • Foodtech
    • Food Waste
    • Future Food
    • Future of Grocery
    • Restaurant Tech
    • Robotics, AI & Data
  • Spoon Newsletters
  • The Spoon Foodtech Slack
  • Podcasts
  • Jobs
    • Job Listings
    • Post a Job
  • About
  • Events

AI-Powered Robots Taste Testing Chinese Food for Authenticity

by Chris Albrecht
May 6, 2019May 6, 2019Filed under:
  • Robotics, AI & Data
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

If there was one job you’d think would be safe from automation, it would be taste-testing. And yet, a report out today from The Star online says that in China, a government program has been using AI-powered robots to look at, smell and taste food to ensure its quality and authenticity.

China’s National Light Industry Council has been running a test for the past three years with different food manufacturers to test products such as black rice vinegar, fine dried noodles and Chinese yellow wine. From The Star:

The machines, which can learn on the job, are planted at various points along production lines to monitor the state of the food from raw ingredients to end product. They are equipped with electrical and optical sensors to simulate human eyes, noses and tongues, with a “brain” running a neural network algorithm, which looks for patterns in data.

These robots gather all the sensory information about the food, inspecting it for accuracy and consistency. According to the story, programmers and food experts have gotten the AI to take in all the multisensory data to make assessments that are roughly 90 percent as good as a human.

Though the AI can achieve results that are more consistent than a bank of human testers, The Star writes that the program is not without controversy. The China Cuisine Association objects to the robots, noting that the sophistication of Chinese food requires more nuance and understanding than the AI is capable of, especially when it comes to labeling something as “authentic.”

This isn’t the only instance of the Chinese government using AI to standardize practices in the food world. In January of this year, the Shaoxing Province of China started using cameras and AI in restaurants to automatically (and continuously) monitor sanitary conditions.

Related

Get the Spoon in your inbox

Just enter your email and we’ll take care of the rest:

Find us on some of these other platforms:

  • Apple Podcasts
  • Spotify
Tagged:
  • AI
  • China
  • Chinese government
  • robot

Post navigation

Previous Post Podcast: Making Food Out of Thin Air
Next Post NPD: Frozen Food Sales are Up (Thanks, Millennials!)

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Primary Sidebar

Get The Spoon in Your Inbox

Subscribe to Our Podcast!

Subscribe in iTunes or listen on Spotify.

Sitting Down to Dinner? Make Room for Satellite Statisticians
Food Tech News: More Smoothie Robots, Unilever’s Food Innovation Hub
Video: Airspace Link Gets Immediate FAA Approvals for Commercial Drone Flights
Week in Restaurants: WeWork Shuts Down Spacious, Just Eat Rejects Another Takeover Bid
Consumer Sous Vide Pioneer Nomiku is Shutting Down

Footer

  • About
  • Advertise
  • Staff
  • Events

© 2016–2019 The Spoon. All rights reserved.

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.