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Where do you see yourself in five years time? It's a
common interview question designed to learn about a person's ambitions,
and thanks to new technology you could soon be able to give a precise
answer to this question.
Researchers from Microsoft and Google can predict where a person will be
years from now using a new computer software called Far Out.The
programme tracks a person using a GPS device and learns their routine.
It then uses this information to accurately guess their future locations
and will adapts its predictions even if someone changes their job,
relationship or moves house.
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Adam Sadilek and John Krumm wanted to learn more about what they call
'human mobility' so set about developing a formula that could predict
where a person would be years in the future in their paper 'Far Out:
Predicting Long-Term Human Mobility.'
They gave 703 volunteers in Seattle a GPS device and told them to carry
it around with them at all times, including going to work, shopping, out
with friends and even travelling.
The researchers also fitted GPS units to the buses, cars and other
transport used by the volunteers on a daily basis.
Sadilek and Krumm managed to collect around 150 million location points
and 32,000 days worth of GPS data during this experiment.
This data was fed into their Far Out computer program to predict the
'long-term human mobilty' of each subject.
Far Out was able to offer predictions, and could also automatically
discover when someone veered from their usual routine, adapting
accordingly.
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'For example, [Far Out] might notice that Tuesdays and Thursdays are
usually about the same and fairly consistent from week to week,' the
researchers told Fast Company.
'Then when we ask about a future Tuesday or Thursday, the algorithm
automatically produces a typical Tuesday/Thursday as a prediction.'
'If there is a sharp transition, such as a move to another city, the
system notices there is a discrepancy between its predictions and actual
data and adapts to the new patterns.
'Most people have only a few ‘revolutionary’ changes in the course of
their lives, so Far Out isn't caught off guard too often.'
According to Salidek and Krumm's paper, humans are mostly predictable
even over extended periods of time.
The paper said: 'Much work has been done on predicting where is one
going to be in the immediate future, typically within the next hour.
By contrast, we address the open problem of predicting human mobility
far into the future, a scale of months and years.'
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Far Out uses 'a nonparametric method that extracts significant and
robust patterns in location data, learns their associations with
contextual features (such as day of week), and subsequently leverages
this information to predict the most likely location at any given time
in the future.'
The researchers believe the software could have social uses, similar to
Foursquare, or could be used by advertisers and marketers.
They also believe the results 'open a number of interesting avenues for
future research and applications.'
This could include predicting rises in populations, the spread of
disease, traffic problems and broadband demand.
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