Facebook Releases Map of Exactly Where All 7.5B People in the World Live

Facebook has an immense amount of information and now you can add where millions of people live to that list. The social network created a data map of the human population by combining government census numbers, information obtained from satellite images, and Facebook's image recognition neural network. They can now locate every single man-made structure to within just five meters.
Now, why was this map created? The company told CNBC that it will help them figure out which types of internet service, based either on land, in the air or in space, they can use to get good internet service to people currently living in areas with poor connections.
They don't exactly know where all 7.5 billion people on earth live... yet. The map currently covers 23 countries. The team found that 99 percent of the population in those countries lived within 63 km of the nearest city. "Hence, if we are able to develop communication technologies that can bridge 63 km with sufficiently high data rates, we should be able to connect 99 percent of the population in these 23 countries," the Connectivity Lab's Tobias Tiecke wrote.
"Satellites are exciting for us. Our data showed the best way to connect cities is an internet in the sky," said Facebook's head of strategic innovation partnerships and sourcing, Janna Lewis, when she was in San Francisco for this week's Space Technology and Investment Forum. "We're trying to connect people from the stratosphere and from space."

Source: complex.com