“We’ve known that smell contains information we can use to detect disease,” he says. “But computers can’t speak that language and can’t interpret that data yet.”

While that’s his long-term goal for the company, in the near term he wants Osmo to make safer, more sustainable aroma molecules for fragrances in everyday products like perfume, shampoo, insect repellant and laundry detergent.

— Alex Wiltschko, CEO and co-founder of AI startup Osmo, on why it is important to teach computers to smell. Read more in Led by a former Google researcher, this company wants to give computers a sense of smell—here’s how it works at CNBC.