Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones

Post by nephihaha » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 12:41 PM UTC

saberience wrote: post #105

This is one of the most dystopian things I've heard in a long while. I mean, we have a lot of weird shit going down right now... like AI being used to automate art BEFORE it's being used to automate dangerous and menial jobs, but knowing that people are being killed with help from data generated by millions of kids and young adults playing a fun, cute videogame is just so freaking dark and weird. We are a very strang…

Post by Muromec » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 12:42 PM UTC

drfloyd51 wrote: post #154

pj_mukh wrote: post #111

As someone who works in this space, the headline is a bit of a stretch. The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theaters of war is a tiny sliver (or zero?). The military contractor (Vantar/Maxar) in question basically admits so but just "reserves the right" to use the data which is the political battle line ala Claude and DoD. This is mostly an ideological battle.

> The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theaters of war is a tiny sliver. Currently active theaters. And now there are detailed locations of our cities. We might not get killbots today but we will get pacificationbots.

Post by beAbU » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 12:49 PM UTC

pj_mukh wrote: post #111

As someone who works in this space, the headline is a bit of a stretch. The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theaters of war is a tiny sliver (or zero?). The military contractor (Vantar/Maxar) in question basically admits so but just "reserves the right" to use the data which is the political battle line ala Claude and DoD. This is mostly an ideological battle.

Post by SecretDreams » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 12:52 PM UTC

btbuildem wrote: post #182

pera wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember reading in the news that Pokémon Go was quite popular in Palestine. If GP has access to this dataset it would be interesting to know how sparse is the data in that area.

If the data was spatial - shapes and layouts of buildings and streets and such - that dataset is no longer current.

Post by SecretDreams » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 12:55 PM UTC

muyuu wrote: post #150

pj_mukh wrote: post #111

As someone who works in this space, the headline is a bit of a stretch. The overlap in the locations of Pokemon Go Player data and any active Drone heavy theaters of war is a tiny sliver (or zero?). The military contractor (Vantar/Maxar) in question basically admits so but just "reserves the right" to use the data which is the political battle line ala Claude and DoD. This is mostly an ideological battle.

It's not like there's a moral high ground about not collaborating with the military. Unless you want to advantage America's adversaries, namely China, Putin's Russia and Iran's current regime. There's always this implicit, sometimes explicit, "war bad" childish political philosophy in posts like this. In reality war is a given and you have to be prepared to have the upper hand.