Yesterday I came back from Los Angeles, and thanks to all the dumbfudgery going on with the government shutdown and all the cascading mess, my original flight – which I was told I needed to arrive at the airport three hours before to be safe – dissolved into the aether. I found the cheapest possible flight home to replace it, and that kept me in airplanes and airports for about 15 hours yesterday. So I had a good amount of time to really, you know, experience airports.
My flight had an absurd number of stops and layovers; I think it was LAX-Phoenix-Tulsa-Anchorage-Atlanta-St.Louis-Anchorage-Newark-Raleigh/Durham. Something like that; it was all a blur. But a blur that put me in a lot of airport bathrooms, and those bathroom-speriences, combined with hearing far too much about AI lately, gave me some ideas.
Specifically, it gave me three ideas for how AI can disrupt the airport-bathroom experience! I mean that in the full tech-bro sense of disrupt, meaning it’s a bold, powerful new idea that no one asked for and no one really wants, anyway, and is going to completely change the market, forever.
Get out your checkbooks, because you’ll want in on the ground floor of all of these:
First up, we’re going to disrupt the paper-towel dispensing industry! This is a market that hasn’t seen significant innovations since the widespread adoption of motion sensors in the early 2000s. Now, thanks to AI, we can have paper towel dispensing that hits that long-desired dream: judgmental paper towel dispensing!
Here, an AI-powered facial recognition camera figures out who you are, then, using the paper towel dispenser’s broadband internet connection, scours the web for any and all information it can find about you, social media posts, web browsing histories, online purchases, credit score, phone records, text messages, forum comments, whatever – and uses that information to decide how much paper towel you deserve.
Sure, you may end up with a miserably thin two-inch band of paper towel, but deep down you’ll know you’re getting exactly what you should. Let it hurt a little; it’s good for you.
This one is a good example of how AI can expand our own senses. Have you ever entered an airport bathroom stall only to be confronted by a toilet absolutely Jackson Pollock’d with various drips and fluids and spatters? Sure you have. And in that case, all you can really do is guess what all those blorps and globs and whatevers are.
Not anymore! This new AI-powered app will let your phone tell you exactly what those smears on the toilet seat are! Is that mucus? Something more, um, intimate? Is that urine or bile? No more guessing! Now you know exactly what you’ll be plopping your bare ass onto!
Feels good to know exactly, right?
Finally, an AI solution to the biggest airport bathroom problem of all: waiting to get an open stall. Right now, it’s a crapshoot. You just stand there and wait and hope. But, with this AI stall-wait-estimation app, you can get actual percentages showing which stall is the most likely to free up soonest!
Using your phone’s camera and microphone, the AI can look at foot position and motion, can listen for grunts, splashes, moans, phone conversations, and gasps, and even use a complex miasma-processing algorithm that can translate camera and IR scan data into an odor-evaluation system to estimate how long someone will be occupying and using, vigorously using, that stall.
This is a game changer, people.
The future is here, everyone! And it’s going to completely change your airport bathroom experiences, just like you’ve always dreamed.
is the ??? symbol on the stain identifier app supposed to identify the aftermath from Taco Bell?
Dante just rolled over in his…um, grave. You just added an additional circle of hell…
I did what now?
Am I the only one noticing that it’s >2^10 number of bodily fluids?
You deserve a Nobel prize.
No fair! I’m full of sh*t. Shouldn’t I get more than 3 squares of toilet paper?
Not if you can change your undertrousers the next morning.
I’d settle for an EMP device to eliminate shitter-doom-scrollers while I stand outside the door, gritting my teeth turtle-heading it. Or something that uses sensors like you indicated and if it doesn’t detect activity over a reasonable period of time (90 seconds?), plunges a huge spike into the ass of the scrolling squatter.
Torch, you can’t just be giving away ideas like this. Looking at the valuation of companies with similar AI approaches, this article alone is worth, what, maybe 10.5 billion dollars?
E-Jac is my new rapper name
With the new hit single ‘J-Izzle ft Mr Hands’
There’s already a rapper named Jizzlebuckz:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zSv-N2L6aw
Toecutter, if there’s one thing I’ve learned being a voracious Autopian comment consumer, is that your esoteric knowledge is really second to none. Kudos.
This had me absolutely cackling at my desk. Some of your finest work to date, Torch.
Think the passage there at the end referencing AI’s ability to listen for grunts, splashes, moans, phone conversations, and gasps took the cake, but this is excellent from start to finish (no pun intended). Would use.
I have another idea for bathroom AI… An Ultra-Premium VIP restroom experience that comes with attendants that provide ‘custom experiences’ that are based on AI searching your web browsing/PORN browsing history… for a truly disruptive airport bathroom experience…
I’m going to invest everything in the ejac identification technology RIGHT NOW.
Finally, a GOOD use for AI!
Japanese toliet and restroom technology would defeat any tech bros attempt. They are already half way there with stuff that actually works on local compute now some connected cloud of nonsense. On the other hand it’s apparently illegal to have a bidet / washlet in the UK because they don’t have check values. The Singaporeans have also embraced Japanese toliet tech and restroom design taking it further. Buckees and some truck stops have the full stall rooms and lights already. But employees bio engineers to survey and remedy issues. Buckees seems more frequent.
My mother-in-law, in the UK, has a bidet.
If it’s illegal the the police are doing a terrible job of enforcement.
If it has a backflow preventer or separate water line it’s apparently ok. I know some municipally have such terrible permitting process you technically need a permit to replace a light bulb. This seems like that.
https://aphc.co.uk/homeowners/the-safe-installation-of-toilet-and-bidet-douche-sprays-what-you-need-to-know/
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate
Probably because they know enforcing that is a)near impossible, and b)really dumb
Bidet banning is how the Western civilization will die. We, in the southernmost south, will fight toes and nails for out god-given right to a proper bidet.
I put one in my camper this year because I don’t like not having one when I’m on vacation. The ones at home are far better though. Heated seat, heated water, heated air dry… all the goodies. Everyone should treat themselves to a fancy Japanese toilet. Seriously… you’ll wonder why you lived without it for as long as you did.
Ours have only heated water, but they’re a massive step up from animaldom. Bidets are in our Constitution. Presidents and currency are disposable; bidets, not at all.
They should be mandatory in public toliets. Big toliet paper is a menace to society. Even the biggest rednecks I know haven gotten hooked and complain about public toilets. I bought a bunch of Chinese washlet in bulk cheap a while ago and give them to people. They all say they dont know how they lived without one. My dad evangelizes them to his old man friends too and installs them for them.
Your dad is a wise, just man. Amen.
I assume the Minneapolis airport will equip its bathrooms with humanoid robots designed to take a wide stance.
“Have you ever entered an airport bathroom stall only to be confronted by a toilet absolutely Jackson Pollock’d with various drips and fluids and spatters?”
When I lived in Chicago I learned that if I needed a bio break while shopping in the Loop, I should seek a big department store and go to a high floor. The cleanliness up there was matched only by the number of “No Loitering” signs.
Any mid-tier or up hotel is a great roadside poop hack. Forget starbucks or McD’s, find a Hampton Inn or something. Just walk in, there’s always a bathroom in the lobby, it’s always clean (any hotel guests will use the one in their room), it’s nearly always vacant especially mid day when hotels are mostly empty, and it’s usually a single-serve, so you get it to yourself. Sometimes there’s free snacks or coffee out you can help yourself to.
Note budget hotels often don’t (or it requires a room key like the pool or something), you can probably guess why.
I was thinking of making a Larry Craig wide stance comment but thought I was an old fart and nobody would get it. “Old fart” – I “crack” myself up.
*tap-tap*
(brrring!) “‘Dweena?”
On a similar note, with the rise of independent premium lounges in airports, what about premium subscription restrooms? You pay a low monthly fee for an exclusive restroom experience with premium, fully-enclosed stalls, extra room for changing clothes, and short cleaning intervals. Premium tiers offer “Lightning Lane” immediate access, no waiting in line.
And on a related note… pay for ultra-premium restroom subscription and the restroom comes to you! That’s right… there is a team that when you press a button on your ultra premium restroom app, they use your phone’s geolocation and bring a portable restroom that is exclusively for you to use!!!
Thanks, I hate it. 😀
Wait till I get into the Ultra-Premium VIP restroom that comes with optional attendants with an optional ‘perv’ package…
Having spent way too much time in ER’s and hospitals in the last couple of years, would buy!
Do some of those airport lounges have showers?? They should IMO. Set it up like the small gym I used to go to, there were 3 bathrooms, each was just a toilet, sink, bench, then just a normal shower stall. That way you have privacy and can feel like a human being after being delayed for 15 hours. Or if you are flying around the world and have a layover in Tokyo or Dubai.
Yep, most international business/first class lounges have showers. You simply sign up at the front desk. I’ve used them at multiple airport lounges around the globe and they’re fantastic. They’re usually well-appointed at the same level as a 4-5 star hotel bathroom and of course they’re cleaned/restocked with fresh towels after each use. It’s incredibly refreshing during a layover after a long flight.
Domestic lounges typically don’t have them though.
The allocation system varies from lounge to lounge, as do the appointments. I’m often coming through Paris on the way back from the US, and the Salon Air France ones are pretty great: pretty much just walk in, and you get towels, bathrobe, shaving kit, fancy soap.
On the other hand, go through Amsterdam and it’s either an email-based list (KLM non-Schengen ‘lounge 52’) or it’s sign up and wait (the Schengen ‘Prison 25’) for a stall without a toilet.
Torch’s article misses the horror of AI toilets: a company is fitting cameras under the seat that give you real time stool analysis. Supposed to be for medical purposes, but I’d take its output and tell the AI to use it as the basis for a play-by-play/color commentator radio feed that would play in the rest of the bathroom, and probably the concourse immediately outside.
“And here’s Smith settling into the box and woah! There goes the feed!”
“Can’t see the logs for the forest, Bob”
I’ll let you imagine what horrors come next…
“
Imagine you’re in an “emergency” bathroom situation, but you cheaped out and got the Basic Subscription, which means you have to watch an ad before the stall door opens. 🙁
“Watch a 30 second advert for Cialis or pay $5 to lift the lid NOW!”
There’s more than an ad payout’s worth of misery in store for anyone that strands me for an extra 30 seconds on Turtle Beach.
(While knowing that, sadly, the poor bastard cleaning it up will have nothing to do with and earn nothing from such an exploitative arrangement.)
You only encounter this in airport restrooms?? Lucky! This has happened often enough where I work that we now have a special sign in the restroom and toilet-cleaning equipment in each stall.
It’s when the Pollocking is so violent that it comes up right to the underside of the seat that I have to wonder “how?”.
When it’s somehow on the exterior, I just assume someone didn’t quite make it in time.
And then there are times when the wall has been Pollocked. Maybe it was a splash? I don’t want to know.
Twice at work I’ve been seated in a stall and then seen a puddle of piss slowly spreading from the stall next to me. This is from someone sitting down
How does someone completely miss the bowl while sitting on it ?!?!
There was a sculpture at a park I used to go to that used the surface tension of water to make a fountain cling to the underside of a sphere.
The same effect could take a stream of a water based flow and yoink it under, say, a thigh, then up and out under the seat.
Or it’s a gentleman in a state of arousal and can’t point it down.
Or, and I don’t know why I’m burying this at the end, people are just awful.
Dick too long to fit inside?
Is it the same toilet? Maybe it has a leaky toilet flange and it’s coming from between the bottom of the toilet and the floor? I don’t know, lol.
Nope.
Could be someone hovering instead of sitting – or squatting on top of the seat instead of sitting on it. (Has to be a reason I see signs telling people not to do that in public bathroom)
Found poo on top of the toilet seat a few time too. Also pretty much impossible if one is seated for the full duration of the ride.
You laugh, but a lot of airport and large transit stations in Japan have restroom maps outside the entrance with red and green lights indicating if a stall is occupied or not. It lets you identify a free stall before you even go in so you can make a beeline to an open one. The map just goes off what doors are locked, no motion sensors or cameras.
I’ve also seen digital signage at airports just outside the restrooms indicating how many open stalls there are and the walking distance to the next restroom.
That kind of simple, functional thinking will never make the tech bros trillions of dollars though.
I mean, it’s still generating user data. You could use average stall locking times to estimate wait times, create restroom service schedules, measure water usage, etc. All that can be fed into an airport management system for tracking expenses, restock intervals, variable costs, you name it.
Even just a locking sensor can generate a huge amount of user data that can be used for all sorts of things.
There is also the far simpler system of having the actual lock show red or green. No electronics required at all
True, but the purpose of having the map outside of the restroom is so you can just keep walking to the next restroom down the concourse if all of the stalls are full.
Baby steps.
This doesn’t solve the most annoying, irritating, vexing, infurating, ad infinitum issue with the American toilet stalls: gaps between the panels and doors as well as a foot-high gap between the panels and floors. I can’t even put my luggage on the floor or hang it from the coat hook on the door, knowing anyone would swipe them under or over the doors. Not to mention the grossest men poking their faces under the panel to ogle at you or tapping their shoes under the panel for blowjobs between the panels.
At a restaurant where I worked as a waiter in Denver during the 1990s, we were confounded by yards and yards of toilet papers accumulating on the floor. No idea what the fuck the guys were doing with them. That is until I had to use the toilet one day. I saw the reason and called my boss to sit down and pretend to shit. He saw the massive gaps (half inch) between doors and panels. He ordered the entire restrooms rebuilt to eliminate the gaps. Problem solved.
In Germany and most European countries, the toilet stalls are so hermetically sealed that nobody could peek through the gaps or grab our luggage, shopping bags, hand bags, etc.
In the USA we have an irrational need to know what is happening in toilet stalls.
Can’t have the privacy of a fully closed off space because then what if someone did drugs or had sex in a toilet stall.
Some places take the doors off completely.
Think of the children!!!
The first place I encountered doorless stalls was my middle school. Suffice to say, I didn’t poop there unless I had no choice in the matter. High school was the same way. The bullying from other students was relentless, but when you can’t hold it anymore, what else can you do?
Since, I’ve occasionally seen these sorts of facilities in city parks, campgrounds, rest stops, a library, bars, a bus station, public pools, among other places, and more than once even had to use them with other people present. It was… awkward.
For whatever reason, it’s a US cultural more to deny people privacy for excretion, while normalizing shaming them for it as small children as an approach to potty training. It’s quite sadistic if you think about it.
In China, they drop the shaming part, and just have open toilets with no partitions(at least in most places) that everyone is expected to use in front of each other and no one is conditioned to be uncomfortable using, and that’s a more rational approach. So too is the European/Japanese/Australian approach of just allowing everyone to have full privacy when they need to crap. In both cases, there are no mixed messages, but I prefer the latter approach.
Haven’t been to China get besides flying through the airport but I’ve seen the long row of toilets in Japan before. It really comes down to culture and how people are raised. Logically there is not reason to be ashamed of someone seeing you void waste – everyone does it.
Same with nudity. Some places it is a huge deal and others the whole family is at the nude beach together.
Option 2 is way better than licking or sniffing to identify stains. This is what AI should be made for, not creating crap writing or shite art that replaces real, talented humans.
Then again, rather than firing up a small nuclear reactor to power the AI to identify the stains, maybe just grab a wad of paper and wipe the rim? Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.
The only thing missing here is that we need to tie in massive layoffs that we will all benefit from using this new enhanced AI bathroom experience.
Next time AWS goes down and I can’t use the bathroom as a result, I blame you!
Oh Torch! Laughing tears came out on this one. Thanks for the stupid smile on my face today! (And honestly most days) Please never change.
“waiting to get an open stall. Right now, it’s a crapshoot. You just stand there and wait and hope.”
Wouldn’t this situation NOT be a crapshoot? You’re standing in line waiting (hopefully) to do that.
“Crapshoot” accurately describes what’s going on in the stalls too, come to think of it!