

You Call This Thai Food? The Robotic Taster Will Be the Judge - whyenot
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/29/world/asia/bad-thai-food-enter-a-robot-taster.html

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pierrec
>The machine evaluates food by measuring its conductivity at different
voltages.

They should really have kept the functioning principle behind more smoke &
mirrors, because this suddenly makes the whole thing seem very childish and
ridiculous. Conductivity may slightly cross over with the tongue's means of
perception, but the main determinant of a food item’s flavor is the sense of
smell, which is incredibly complex. We don’t even know how it works, but it
seems to perform an in-depth analysis of every volatile molecule’s shape and
features.

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etiam
I don't know if is this an ideal way to judge the authenticity of Thai food,
but I think it's refreshing as an applications of artificial senses beyond
images and sound.

I've been playing with the idea of doing some machine learning on artificial
smell or taste. Does anyone here have experiences with such things? In
particular I'd love to learn something about what the options are for the
sensors and peculiarities of the sampling process compared to light/sound.

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kiba
Authenticity? I don't really care about that as so much as if the food tastes
any good.

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marijn
You get what you optimize for. I can imagine food being served, if there's
enough incentive to make this machine happy, that conducts electricity in all
the right ways, but doesn't actually taste any better.

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sunwooz
Thai food in NJ/NY is in a sad state. The best Thai food in NYC doesn't hold a
candle to an old lady making some gai gap tiam on the street of Chiang Mai.

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quesera
Whatever the other merits of San Francisco, it does have the best Asian food
in the continental U.S. (Hawaii has better).

Nowhere else (and I've looked), comes close.

"Better" here means: the largest number of good options, the highest mean
among the better-than-average, and (somewhat aggregate of the previous) the
most likely that any not-obviously-bad choice will be good.

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jimmywanger
I assume you mean the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Japanese food in San Francisco proper is resoundingly mediocre - I can't
think of one good ramen place.

If you want good ramen, go to San Mateo or San Jose. Same thing with sushi.

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coldcode
I sort of wish we in the US had committees named like "Thai Delicious
Committee".

