Abstract
Decades before the existence of anything resembling an artificial intelligence system, Alan Turing raised the question of how to test whether machines can think, or, in modern terminology, whether a computer claimed to exhibit intelligence indeed does so. This paper raises the analogous issue for olfaction: how to test the validity of a system claimed to reproduce arbitrary odours artificially, in a way recognizable to humans. Although odour reproduction systems are still far from being viable, the question of how to test candidates thereof is claimed to be interesting and non-trivial, and a novel method is proposed. Despite the similarity between the two questions and their surfacing long before the tested systems exist, the present question cannot be answered adequately by a Turing-like method. Instead, our test is very different: it is conditional, requiring from the artificial no more than is required from the original, and it employs a novel method of immersion that takes advantage of the availability of easily recognizable reproduction methods for sight and sound, a la Nicéphore Niépce and Alexander Graham Bell.