Your next beer could have been brewed by a computer. It sounds like a scene out of a sci-fi film, but IntelligentX believes that this could be the trick to perfecting brew technology. Its A.I. technology takes customer feedback and produces new beer recipes.
It seems like an interesting quirk in a sea of craft beers vying for attention. But after autonomous truck startup Otto delivered its first 50,000 cans of Budweiser last week, a new vision of the future emerged: that of a fully automated beer industry, crafted to satisfy the changing needs of consumers.
“There’s a craft brewing revolution happening across the world right now,” said Huw Leith, co-founder of IntelligentX, in a recorded video. “People’s tastes are changing faster than ever before as a result, and A.I. is the perfect way to respond.”
The A.I. is called Automatic Brewing Intelligence, or ABI, and it can have conversation with customers to receive feedback. At the bar, users can message ABI through Facebook (possibly while drunk) and tell them exactly what they think about their drink. The beer is shipping in short supplies, and it’s clear IntelligentX is positioning the drink as part of a crafted experience, rather than something you order several rounds in at the local.
The A.I. then uses reinforcement learning and bayesian decision making to come to a decision on how best to alter the recipe to accomodate the received feedback. IntelligentX works with brewers to understand their existing processes, inputting their methods into the database to provide a base level for beer production.
“We can’t make millions of beers, so we start by working closely with the brewers to encode their intuition into the algorithm,” said Dr Rob McInerney, co-founder of IntelligentX. In other words, ABI is unlikely to throw out a bizarre recipe that nobody would drink.
“This leads to creativity, structured by data, that allows us to evolve our beer generation after generation,” McInerney said.
Science loves to experiment with beer brewing, like in June when the Queen Victoria Museum successfully brewed beer from a yeast found in a 220-year-old shipwreck. But IntelligentX’s creation takes this to a new level, inching closer to the day when breweries can provide tailor-made beers for specific sections of the market. Just don’t hurt the robot’s feelings when you send in feedback.
