Microsoft and Shell build A.I. into gas stations to help spot smokers

The last thing you want to see when you pull into a gas station is some doofus lighting up a smoke. Whether they missed the warning notices or, perhaps, the science class back at high school about open flames and flammable vapor is, in that moment at least, largely immaterial. As for your own course of action upon seeing such reckless behavior, you can either put your foot down and hightail it out of there before the whole place goes up, or yell at the smoker to put it the hell out. Tackling the very same issue, Shell has been working with Microsoft on a solution that aims to make all future visits to gas stations stress-free, at least in terms of potential explosive activity. The system uses Microsoft's Azure IoT Edge cloud intelligence system to quickly identify and deal with smokers at a gas station, and it's already being tested at two Shell stations in Thailand and Singapore.