An App (concept) that writes your autobiography
A typical smartphone today can read and detect a lot of data about the person using it. I was wondering what if there was an app — an AI sitting inside your phone, documenting every minute of your life! It can even be Google Now itself and…
All you have to do is Nothing.*
*Yes, really, nothing. This is assuming that this app has access to everything you do on your phone, every app you use, every conversation you have etc. Let me explain the concept with an example. Read on to see how the AI can write stories of 3 randomly chosen days in my life.
Story #1 (First day of a short trip to home)
Can’t believe that an AI can write all this without you having to type anything? I have highlighted various data that the phone knows / reads / detects / draws / calculates and color coded them as you can see in the legend.
Now, try to read the same story with these highlights to get more clarity.
As you can see, along with the regular location, weather and time data, the AI can read and write a lot more stuff.
How does it know about my last visit? It keeps track of my travel tickets and location data. How does it know about the jeep? It can read my Facebook status. Even if I had not mentioned “jeep”, it can do number plate recognition on one of the jeep images I posted. By performing a search on this number on the RTA website, it can not only know about the model, it can also read a bunch of other details (Registering authority, Date of registration, Owner name etc.). How can it say that the road is bumpy? Accelerometer + Gyroscope. How does it know there are no street lights? Ambient Light Sensor.
How does it know the games I played? Image processing on the photos I posted on Facebook. How does it know about Chai? Historical data of people’s acitivities at that time at that location. How does it know that Santosh left? Location data of his phone. How can it say “one hell of a night”? NLP / Sentiment analysis on the status update I put on Facebook, the comments I received and my likes on those comments. How does it know that my boss and colleague commented? It can detect from my slack group or by performing a Linkedin search.
Sounds exciting? Read on!
Story #2 (just another day)
The AI realized that I am a sound sleeper because I don’t wake up for the first 5 alarms ever. How can it tell my heart rate? Heart rate sensor has come up on some Samsung phones :) How does it know I hate HR emails? I have been opening and immediately closing them or marking them read without even opening or just deleting them for the last few days. The AI would have learnt that they don’t matter to me. How does it know my ‘usual work’? Historical data.
Story #3 (solo trip to Lonavala)
Whatever I wrote above, although technically possible, it may not be feasible to implement. There could be lot of privacy / security concerns and technical constraints involved. However, I am quite fascinated by the very fact that our smartphones can read all this data with today’s existing technology. There is a ghost writer in your pockets!
Imagine 20 years from now… If I think about it, almost every moment of our lives can be captured by our gadgets. The possibilities are endless. For instance, Grand Theft Auto is an example of how much technology can progress in about 18 yrs. My brother and I played almost every edition of GTA. When we played the first version, we wondered how awesome it would be to play this in 3D and BOOM, 4 years later, GTA III came out and we also thought it had the best graphics ever. When San Andreas was released, we thought no other game would have a map bigger than this. Now, look at GTA V. It exceeds expectations on every front and truly marks the beginning of next generation gaming.
Finishing Thoughts
While some people may freakout reading this, I am excited and amused and I am sure there must be lot of others thinking like me. Now imagine if everyone has this app and every moment of lives of millions of people is being recorded. Google already knows a ton of data about us by our Google searches, Youtube searches, checkins etc. By combining all this data, we can study a lot about ourselves and a bunch of interesting and useful things can be done.
I believe the world is not as random as it seems to be and there could be patterns everywhere. For instance, by gathering location data of lot of people visiting the salon near your home, one may observe that it is free on Thursday and Fridays between 3–6 PM and crowded at other times. You can thus plan your next visit accordingly!
Smartphones have already revolutionized the way we live. With technology like IoT, VR, Robots, Wearable Tech etc. coming into play, shit is gonna get real soon!
In 20 years from now, we will live in a very different world.
Inspiration
