The five-year project was the brainchild of Eric Horvitz, an AI researcher at Microsoft Labs in Seattle. He came up with the concept while, predictably, stuck in traffic.
“It was awful,” he said. “Everything seemed to be backed up.”
“It hit me that we had to do all the side streets.”
“We really needed to understand the whole city.”
Microsoft employees offered to carry GPS systems in their cars and the software for the city soon built up so that the fastest routes could be found, even if they seemed counterintuitive.
The system is now being rolled out covering 72 US cities and will be available via Microsoft Live.
iTnews Executive Retreat - Security Leaders Edition
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