Uber Could Soon Find Out If You’re Drunk Before Car Arrives To Pick You Up

Uber is looking at the idea of using artificial intelligence (A.I.) to determine if riders have had one beer too many, and then tailor its service accordingly.

A patent application filed by the ridesharing company this week details how A.I. could be used to detect small changes in a rider’s behavior as they use the app to request an Uber.

Titled “predicting user state using machine learning,” the patent doesn’t explicitly mention drunkenness or drug use. But its contents, which speak of “uncharacteristic user states” and “identifying a normal or abnormal state of the respective user,” suggest such matters may be at the center of the idea. Other conditions that could also conceivably lead to uncharacteristic behavior by a rider could also include extreme tiredness.

‘The system uses a computer model to identify user and trip characteristics indicative of the unusual user state.’ Uber’s AI has several ways of guessing if someone’s bongoed.

Firstly, it could use reports filed by previous drivers, which Uber refers to as ‘providers’. ‘Such monitoring and trip feedback may indicate whether a user’s state was unusual during the trip or when picked up by the provider,’ it continued.

‘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.