Uber AI Could Tell If Ride-Requesters Are Drunk By How They Hold Their Phone

• by Chuck Martin , June 11, 2018

Uber wants to know if passengers are drunk before picking them up.

The ridesharing company has filed a patent to use artificial intelligence to identify how drunk a passenger is before picking them up.

“The system uses a computer model to identify user and trip characteristics indicative of the uncharacteristic user states,” says the patent application.  “The system uses the data about past trips to train a computer model to predict a user state of a user submitting a trip request.”

Ride-requester activities, such as how many typographical errors are made requesting a ride, the amount of time it takes for the person to interact after receiving new information via the mobile app, the angle at which the phone is being held, movement of the device during the request entry or a user’s travel speed can be factored in.

The system then analyzes the data and generates a prediction about the state of the user, such as does the person appear to be drunk. The system can compare past trip behaviors of the person to identify any deviation.

Based on the results, the system could match the person with certain drivers and modify pickup or drop-off locations.