January 23, 2014

Microsoft Research develops smart elevator that proves how predictable you are

by Gareth Mankoo

In a pretty impressive breakthrough, Microsoft Research has introduced a smart elevator that uses sorcery of sorts to deduce where you are headed. Like most artificial intelligence systems, this elevator makes use of a learning algorithm that studies a person’s personal habits and traits, thereby correctly recognizing a series of patterns that help it identify a person’s destination. The sensors enable the elevator to decide a person’s destination even before the passengers decide it themselves. Before publicizing the awesomeness of the elevator, the company folk had it installed three months prior to study how people behave.

The level of detailed information that the learning algorithm picks up is quite spooky. It picks conversations spoken on a previous day, like for example, if you mentioned having lunch with a person on particular floor, at a particular time, it just stays there. Waiting and knowing everything, not needing you to so much as press a button.